


Chaos theory

by Kara_luna



Series: My Naruto Tumblr Because I Don't Actually Have One [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Haruno Sakura, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix It, Gen, Generation Swap, Good Orochimaru, Sakura being a good shinobi, kind of, possible orochimaru/jiraiya...., sakura being a beautiful sassy jerk to people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2020-10-06 04:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20500823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: Sakura Haruno was a little girl born with pink hair and viridian eyes.She wasn’t born while the yondaime reigned, nor when Sarutobi Hiruzen held office for the second time.She wasn’t born in the same year as a small dark-haired child who’s brother adored him. Or the same twelve months a pupil less girl with midnight hair took her first breath. And she was not born the year that the Konoha twelve came wailing into the world.Sakura Haruno was a little girl born in the midst of the Second Great Shinobi War, born seven years after the Sanin whom she would come to know.Not time travel, just a look at how different everything may have been if one kid happened to be born in a different generation.How so many people could have been saved, because death has never been the only way to die.In this story, I’m saying the Sannin are 10 years older (in canon closer to 16 but ignore that) than Minato’s generation. This puts Sakura as 3 years older than Minato. The mission that kills Dan hasn’t happened yet and Orochimaru hasn’t started working with Danzo. (Everyone lives, no one dies, because I'm the author with supreme power and can do what I want)





	1. The Strong Start Weak

Curled in the fetal position, Sakura squeezed her eyes shut. Because maybe if she squeezed them tighter the tears would stop streaming down her flushed cheeks. Maybe it would stop  _ hurting.  _ It was a pulsing, convulsing throb of pain in her chest that she couldn’t make leave. Bright hot and all-consuming, it felt like she was crumbling and breaking and shattering apart all at once. She hoped they wouldn’t find her, hoped they’d give up and go back to the academy. 

Kami, why couldn’t the world just leave her be?

She hated them. Those stupid  _ bullies  _ that pulled her hair and chased her into the woods. That called her green eyes the color of snot and threw rocks at her giant forehead.  _ Civilian,  _ they spat, angry and full of vitriol despite their young age, using the word as an insult. 

As if she chose to be who she was. Like she  _ chose  _ to be born. The teachers hardly thought that angering a clan head was worth protecting a weak  _ civilian  _ like her. They sat and turned their backs and refused to look her in the eyes while she cried. They looked away because- even as a child, Sakura knew this- they could not hold the gaze of a child they allowed to be tormented. 

She hated them. The teachers who were meant to help her, to help her grow into a kunoichi. The teachers who believed she would never amount to anything at all. 

Wiping her tears, she glared at the trunk of a rather old tree, ivy covering its bark. She didn’t need them. Actually, she didn’t  _ any  _ of them. She had been alone for as long as she could remember- civilian children would always be outsiders to a village where shinobi clans sent their kin to war- and she was perfectly fine with that. 

She would show them, she’d show them  _ all.  _

It was the promise of a lifetime. 

And she never forgot the vow she made in the forest that day. 

She couldn’t. 

So Sakura trained day after day until her hands bled. She worked until her academy scores changed from dead last in physical combat to slightly above average. She read every book she could legally get her hands on, and even a few she couldn’t (she snuck those ones out of the library from the restricted section by shoving them down her shirt). She wasn’t proud of it, but it honed the katas and jutsus the academy taught her and therefore it was worth nearly getting banned from the library entirely. 

She especially loved the medical texts- as few as there were available to academy students- and found a new talent for memorizing the anatomical terms they offered. The war, however, was worsening. 

Skirmishes on the border with other nations, battles with hundreds of casualties, and no end in sight. It was a grim time in the hidden leaf and academy students were being pushed to be better and graduate faster. They praised those damn  _ prodigies,  _ allowing them to move ahead of their class, and given privileges that the rest of their classmates were not. 

People like Sakura were left alone in the Shadows. 

Sitting in the back of her crowded classroom, she regarded the others around her with a mistrustful glare. Eyes narrowed and darting from one person to the next, studying from behind the high walls she had constructed around herself and her heart. She had no friends but what else was new?

The teacher droned on about methods and weapons and all these things she  _ already knew.  _ They wanted prodigies but only if they were killing machines, only if they were the pinnacle of athletic ability. Intelligence was great, but it wasn’t required. Sakura could have been someone. She could have been special too, unlike this Uchiha brat they were praising  **again ** because yes Tenaki-kun, the shadow clone jutsu  **was ** invented by the Nidaime Hokage, you are just  _ so fucking BRILLANT.  _

They didn’t care that Sakura could perfectly recite every shinobi rule, that when a medic-nin came in to teach the class basic medical care, she was the only one to produce green chakra. 

Not Tenaki-kun. 

She  **hated ** them, and nothing in the world would ever make her care for some  _ prodigy  _ kid. They were everything that she could have been and everything this system had taken from her and she hoped they all would just  **burn. **

* * *

  
  


It was a warm spring day when she graduated from the academy. 

She waited for so long to finally escape the taunts and the stares and everyone who looked down on her. Standing there at the front of the room with a gleaming forehead protector, watching as so many from well-renowned clans dragged their feet in shame for failing. 

But not her. 

Not the civilian scum. 

She passed where they failed. 

And she liked it. 

That night she screamed until her voice was hoarse, fending off her mother who refused to believe  _ she  _ could pass. That the daughter she’d raised to pick flowers and wear skirts, was going to be a shinobi. She said her daughter would do no such thing. So Sakura said she no longer had a daughter, and that was the end of that. Because she knew what she wanted to do with her life and was  **done ** with people telling her what to be. It wasn’t their life! 

Genin were able to live on their own, so Sakura took the money she had collected from house chores and allowances and she bought her own apartment. A single bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, and next to the kitchen there was enough walking room to be considered a living room. She swiftly unpacked her clothes into the tiny closet and unrolled a futon her parents had been oh so gracious as to hurl at her from the window as she left. 

Her team would be given off to a teacher tomorrow and then she would finally begin taking missions. The cheapest place she could find would be covered by the trickle of money earned from lower-ranking missions and as the war escalated she would only be given higher-ranked assignments. She only hoped that her teammates were good, not kind, but good. Just good was enough. And please kami, don’t let them be prodigies. Flashes of Tenaki Uchiha awing his pack of fangirls with a fireball jutsu as his teacher watched on in pride, paraded across her eyelids as she settled into her makeshift bed to sleep. All alone and in a dark, empty space, Sakura finally allowed herself to breathe. 

Because she was completely and irrevocably alone, and nothing had ever felt more like home than that. 


	2. The butterfly who started a hurricane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am shocked I wrote this today after just updating my other story, but the comments just made me want to write and give all you guys a second chapter!

The day she would be assigned to her genin team, it rained harder than it had since last April. 

Wrapping her coat tighter around her small body, Sakura made her way through the abandoned streets of Konoha. The marketplaces had been packed up to protect people’s wares from rain, and save for the few other new genin heading towards the academy with umbrellas, the villagers - both civilians and shinobi - had retreated indoors until the weather let up. 

Times like these, she nearly found herself wondering if being a kunoichi will truly make her happy. Here, strolling down a muddy street riddled with rain puddles, she contemplated her entire life’s goal and overall purpose. It was the opposite of the conditions that protagonists in books did such things, usually, they sat in gardens or rooftops where they could gaze prettily into the stars and question their choices. 

Honestly, being a shinobi had always just been what she _ had _to be. In her mind, there had never really _been_ a choice. It was the only option to her for as long as she could remember and sometimes it made her wonder if maybe it was the same for most other kids. Clan kids especially, but they, literally, were not given a choice. Other children, though, they probably wanted to be shinobi solely through subconscious conditioning. 

Not intentional, of course, but the village praised shinobi for fighting in the war constantly raging at their border, and therefore lots of people were influenced into wanting to join the fight because of some idealistic dream of being a war hero. Sakura was much more selfish than even those kids were, certainly more selfish than the prior mentioned clan kids who sacrificed their own free will for the sake of their family. 

Sakura wanted to be strong. 

So strong that no one would ever hurt her again. 

And wasn’t that selfish?

Rain dripped in her eyes from her bangs - a practical decision to make sure no baby hairs would grow too long and get in her eyes during a mission - and Sakura felt irritation well in her chest for the hairstyle. Smart to have bangs cut across her forehead? Yes. Pleasant when it was raining? No. 

Sighing, she was more than relieved to finally arrive before the academy’s doors. Stepping forward and laying her palm across the wood, she was a moment from pushing it open and finally being in a warm room without rain pouring all over her, when a hand landed on her shoulder. 

Turning, she expected a teacher, or perhaps her sensei if they were especially early, another classmate, maybe. She didn’t quite manage to stop her jolt when she came face to face with an Owl Anbu mask staring down the nearly two feet difference at her. 

“Haruno, Sakura?” The voice was cool and detached. Clipped and shielded of all emotions, the words almost sounded robotic. Despite her aspirations for the future, her need to be the best, Anbu was never an option to her, and it never would be. Her emotions, her passion, it was what made her strong. Without it- She was nothing. 

“Yes, that’s me.” She spoke, a question in her tone. 

“The Lord Hokage requires your immediate presence in his office.” The faceless women, as she could now identify, offered Sakura her hand. A shushin, most probably, was what the older brunette was going to use to transport them. Taking the gloved appendage, she couldn’t help but flinch at the feeling of the metal guards. Not because they hurt, but because the cool sensation felt so very wrong when holding someone’s hand was supposed to feel warm. 

The women one-handedly shaped a few seals - much too fast for Sakura to identify - and suddenly Sakura’s stomach was being pulled through her throat and she lost all feeling in her toes. She reassembled dizzily and fell into a nearby wall, using it to support her swaying body. 

“Ah… This must be Sakura-chan.” A gentle voice murmured behind her, sounding quite pleased to see her. Turning to face the man, her suspicion of being in the Hokage’s office was confirmed. The man behind the large desk, Hiruzen Saratobi, was watching her patiently through wreaths of smoke from his signature pipe, as she gathered her bearings. 

Shushin was not a technique she would be using again for a long time, that Sakura was sure of. 

“Hai, Hokage-sama.” She replied, bowing to him. He chuckled at her picture-perfect form, bent precisely at the waist and just low enough to be polite, but not so low she came across as insincere. It was only then that Sakura’s gaze caught on a second figure by the window. Sunlight glimmered through the transparent surface, it glinted off the amber eyes of an openly bored women who couldn’t be older than twenty. 

The Hokage must have caught her interest in the other women, because he turned to give the blonde a pointed look, as if to say “well? Aren’t you going to contribute?” The novelty of a grown man, let alone one of his exalted position, sassily communicating with someone half his age with only his facial expressions, certainly wasn’t lost on her. 

They obviously knew each other. Not that that helped a whole bunch, he was the Hokage. He could probably name each and every member of the Hyuga clan simply because it helped him politically to show interest in his people (maybe it made the Hyuga feel special, knowing how far those poles were shoved up their asses, she’d guess making them more agreeable would be necessary to not go through cardiac arrest every time he had to deal with them) meaning this woman could be anyone. 

It turns out, she didn’t have to wait at all to learn of the stranger’s identity. The Hokage flat out told her. 

“This is my past student, Tsunade of the Senju clan. She has requested an apprentice be placed in her care to learn the arts of medical ninjutsu and other skills she wishes to pass on-”

The blonde- _ Tsunade _cut him off as Sakura’s mind whirled in shock. “I need a brat to teach so I can prove to those stuffy bastards on the counsel how necessary having a field medic in each shinobi team is.” 

The Hokage gave his student a disapproving look for her crass language. Sakura wasn’t paying attention.

Medic?

Medic. 

They're making her a _ medic. _

_No no no no_, and all of a sudden breathing was much harder than it was before. Her heart pounded like a war drum in her ears and her vision blurred. Panic was knotting in her stomach, bile burning her throat. All she wanted was to leave and never come back. To run and pretend this had never happened. 

A ** _medic?! _ ** That wasn’t what she wanted. That was _ never _ what she wanted! To sit back and watch people die while desperately trying to heal one person’s wounds. To heal one person while six more die right before her, and she could have saved so many more lives if she hadn’t been wasting time pushing her chakra into **one **person. 

It sounded cruel but it was the reality of war. You couldn’t save everyone, she knew that, but being a medic would only force her to watch even more death than if she was a normal shinobi. She wanted to scream and yell until her throat was hoarse and the Hokage gave in and told her she could leave. 

This was supposed to be _her _life. She’d dealt with people telling her what to be as long as she could remember. Parents pushing her to be a proper lady and a housewife, slapping her if she dared talk back. Classmates telling her she would never be a kunoichi, that she _couldn’t _be. She had built her nindo around her goal to be her own person. To make her own choices. To never let anyone else determine who she could or couldn’t be _**ever**_ again. 

They took that nindo and crushed it under their heel.

They wanted her to spend the rest of her life being protected by other people. They wanted her to be a healer, not a fighter and kami knows what happens to medics in a war. They're slaughtered. 

**Cannon fodder. **

She swore to herself she was done being weak but now that’s what they wanted her to be. To heal fish while her classmates learned assassination techniques. To memorize charts while her age mates had their first kill. To devote her entire life, her entire **purpose, **to medical ninjutsu, to something that she has no passion for. 

They wanted her to sacrifice her dream. 

And her only choice was to paint on a smile, pull in the tears, and nod. 

Sakura vaguely heard them talking to her, but it sounded like they were underwater. Or maybe she was. The voices sounded distorted and hard to understand, but she got the gist of it. She wouldn’t have a genin team. She would be assigned to Tsunade for training and her entire schedule would be dictated by her “teacher.” 

It was for her incredible chakra control that the teachers had noted since she had entered the academy. They said not even Tsunade had that kind of control and she wanted to **scream. **

_ If it’s so impressive than why wasn’t _ ** _I _ ** _ a prodigy, huh?! If it’s so unique and needed and you just _ ** _have _ ** _ to make me her apprentice for it, then why didn’t anyone tell me _ ** _I _ ** _ was _ ** _special?! _ ** _ Why did I suffer when _ ** _they didn’t-_ **

And she realized why the women looked so familiar. She was one of the sannin. She was a prodigy, a genin by six years old. She told Sakura she was special but she was a liar**. **And Sakura didn’t trust a thing she said. Because she was never bullied for being weak. She never had stones thrown at her in the sight of the teachers while the adults blatantly ignored her cries. 

She was a prodigy who the village had boasted over, had held on a gleaming pedestal. A Senju. She was just so fucking special, wasn’t she? A Senju _ and _a prodigy, granddaughter of the Shodaime, grand-niece of the Nidaime, and student of the Sandiame. 

She was a princess. 

And bitterness curled in Sakura’s stomach as she watched this beautiful woman before her. Because she couldn’t be ugly, could she? She just had to be ** _perfect._ **

Sakura wasn’t a person to the Senju. She was just another tool to be used for changing the counsel’s mind. She wasn’t an apprentice, she was a playing piece in a game she was forever shunned from. 

They continued to explain the logistics, but they hadn’t seemed to notice her distress. 

They talked and all she heard was “You're going to give up your dream so that Tsunade can achieve hers.” 

And she felt hatred burn on her tongue, waiting for her to spit venomous words. To refuse the apprenticeship, but she knew they wouldn’t let her. 

So Sakura stood before the kindly smiling Hokage and female sannin radiating smugness and felt her entire world crumble.

She smiled brightly and thanked them for the incredible opportunity and assured them she wouldn’t let them down and waved gleefully as she left. 

The door closed behind her and a tear slid over the corner of her smiling lips. Another and another followed until two identical streams flowed down her cheeks, wetting the mouth that stayed stretched in that horrible, fake, pasted-on smile. 

She wasn’t giving up that easily. She’d **make **herself strong, even if no one else helped. She didn’t need a team. It’s not like she wanted to have friends for the first time in her life. It’s not like that team was the only thing that kept her going through the loneliness of her academy days. It’s not like she just wanted to feel wanted. Because she didn’t **need **a team. Fuck them. Fuck them all. She would be just fine on her own, her against the world just like it had always been. If they force her to be a medic, she’ll be the most fearsome damn medic the world had ever seen. 

She’d force them to acknowledge her. She’d take everything Tsunade taught her and she’d twist it into a weapon. 

**No one was ever hurting her again.**

The bullies took the first chunk of her heart, bashed it out with mocking words and sharp insults. 

The adults took the next bit, burned it out with their heavy gazes and molten cowardice. 

Her parents took an entire half, crushed out by their heavy expectations and disgusted looks. 

She took the last section of what remained of it, and held it in her hands, right outside that office. 

She locked her heart in a cage and forgot to make a key. 


	3. Breaking oaths while taking them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The note at the end of these chapters keep repeating or something so just ignore them if you realize they were posted on another chapter too.

Tsunade deserved every name the battlefield had given her, that much Sakura was certain. 

The woman was like no medic she had ever known of, let alone met. The first training session, Sakura was expecting scrolls to study as homework, learning the idea of summoning healing chakra, and perhaps - if she proved to be as good at this as her teacher seemed to think - some hands-on attempts at the mystical palm technique. 

That wasn’t how it happened. 

She had arrived, not to an office or hospital room, but instead to an empty training ground, the farthest from residencies. Well, not completely empty. The sannin seemed to inhabit the entire space with her mere presence, an impressive trait for someone who wasn’t even using killing intent. There was her new sensei, tapping her high heeled sandals in the dirt impatiently as if Sakura hadn’t thrown herself out her window the moment the summons arrived. 

(Even in the academy, she had always been fast - faster than anyone else. It made up for her lack of strength or other physical attributes. Who cares how strong someone is if they can’t hit you? Even Temaki was slower than her, the famed prodigy beaten by a little girl in the area of speed. Laughable.)

“Took you long enough.” Tsunade scoffed, clearly unimpressed with the girl **she **had forced to be her student. Perhaps if Sakura was bad enough, they’d put her onto a normal team and this whole nightmare could be over. Honestly, it was a hopeless dream. 

Shifting her weight, Sakura chooses her phrasing carefully. Rudeness would get her nowhere but scrubbing bedpans, but if she faked too much enthusiasm Tsunade may mistake it for a genuine interest in knowing the women out of training. Or worse, think she’s some kind of fangirl. It was a truly horrific thought to even consider someone thinking that she, Sakura Haruno, would stoop so low as to be someone’s fangirl. 

“Senju-sama I look forward to beginning our first day of training.” The words are measured and clear, spoken in a practiced voice made for professionalism and professionalism only. Tsunade’s eyebrows rose in what she could only guess was a hint of surprise or possibly annoyance. She must have been expecting a shishou or sensei, most likely she thought Sakura would at least use her first name. But Sakura had no intention of building a relationship, she was to get stronger and that was all. 

Tsunade tilted her head, regarding her with amber eyes the color of honey and whiskey. Eyes that seemed to see right through her carefully constructed mask of indifference. 

(And for a split second, Sakura could have sworn she saw something cross her teacher’s face. Something that looked an awful lot like understanding. But obviously she was wrong because Tsunade herself had never experienced what Sakura had, she was sure, and there was simply no way the great Senju heir could be acquainted with someone who had.)

“Ah, your one of those kids.” She didn’t elaborate on it and Sakura didn’t ask her to. 

There was no more talking for the rest of their time together that day. 

* * *

  


Tsunade was not an easy person to please. 

Training was a constant, every day for hours she would stand in one place and see how well she could dodge boulders without moving her feet. Or that time her teacher decided to use her as a kunai target as she ran through the forest blindfolded. The training tactics were certainly unique, but they seemed to have merit, seeing as the improvement was visible. 

Yet it was always a “try harder,” “move faster,” “be better.” 

It stung a little bit, Sakura allowed herself to admit. It stung because she knew she wasn’t the kind of fighter that Tsunade wanted, and she most likely never would be. The sannin was looking for someone who could be on the front lines, someone with impressive taijutsu technique and a toned, battle-ready body. 

_ She’s looking for a prodigy _ , a suppressed, venomous part of her sub-conscience hissed smugly. 

And if those words kept her up all night and made her especially vicious in training the next day, well. Tsunade never has to know that

  
  


Finally, three weeks into training, Sakura has gotten the hang of dodging heavy projectiles. It took a while to understand how to estimate the speed of something when your body is just screaming at you to **move**, but it seemed that her above-average speed helped her out in that particular exercise. 

She refuses to acknowledge that her heart stuttered when the blonde examined her sweating and bruised body, giving a curt nod of acceptance. It had felt good to shove it back into the voice’s face - if disembodied voices had faces - that it had been wrong. 

There was pride in herself despite the many hours of bandaging her wounds and dinners of cold microwave ramen and skipped lunches. Her arms had begun to gain definition, filling out into cords of muscle and her stomach was flattening out from the hundreds of sit-ups and crunches and laps around Konoha she had been forced to perform. 

Staring at herself in the mirror, Sakura could hardly recognize the girl - woman (once you became a shinobi you were no longer a child) - looking back at her. Her hair hadn’t changed all that much since she had graduated. Long hair was a sign of skill due to it’s added vulnerability during missions, and Sakura was never one to back down from a challenge. If she wanted to be the very best, she couldn’t let something like hair have an impact on her fighting ability. 

(She pointedly ignored the fact that she sometimes saw couples in the marketplace on her way home from training, and the women there nearly always had their hair long. And she ignored the part of her she had buried that threaten to resurface at the sight. She ignored that even as an angry, spiteful, lonely academy student, she had never once stopped longly for the feeling of arms around her [or wondering what lips against her’s would feel like]. She absolutely and completely ignored that imagining herself as the most powerful shinobi in her village still left a hollow feeling in her stomach because even though she had reached her goal, she was still all alone.)

Tsunade also seemed to enjoy long hair and she was one of the most powerful women in all of Konoha, perhaps in all the world, therefore Sakura decided that she too should have long treses if she ever hoped to surpass her teacher someday. 

It was her eyes she was most interested in. It wasn’t that they had changed physically, they were the same shade of green they’d always been, it was more the change behind her eyes. Where there used to be a sharpness, a coldness built from anger and resentment, there was now nothing. The jagged edges that once poked out from her irises and attempted to stab anyone who got too close, were now covered away behind a veil of calmness. 

The anger hadn’t left. It was simmering, somewhere deep inside her. An impeccable mask was what she needed now, no one else was allowed to know what she was feeling. No one else had the right to know of her emotions. She felt her walls thicken and stretch higher and higher as the days went on. 

Now barbed ninja wire accompanied those walls, as well as moats and trenches and every defensive measure possible. 

Yet every time Tsunade looked at her and smiled in approval, or made some sarcastic comment or even just twitched her eyebrow in what Sakura could now recognize as exasperation, she felt bare. Like her heart wasn’t protected at all. Like she was lying to herself by saying it was. 

* * *

  


Four weeks into training and Tsunade begins the torture of learning medical ninjutsu. Sakura admits it’s not that physically taxing, but what it’s lacking in physical pain it more than makes up for in psychological distress.

“Hands out, palms down… NO, not like that! You’ll rip off your own finger. No, do it like _ this.” _

“I. Am. _ Trying.” _

“Ya? Well, try _ harder.” _

It turns out that her blonde teacher is, in fact, a backseat healer. Every time Sakura puts her hands out over the dead fish and summons her green chakra, the sannin is there to ‘correct’ her ‘form’ or yell at her for not doing it properly when really there is only SO MANY WAYS YOU CAN HEAL A FUCKING FISH-

Taking a deep breath through her nose, Sakura slowly let it out as a sigh. Mentally counting to ten, she turned to her teacher and calmly asked, “If I’m doing it wrong, then why don’t you show me the correct way of doing it?”

Sniffing like the princess she is - it physically hurt to suppress her eye roll - Tsunade waved away Sakura’s hands and called upon her own (vast and quite impressive) well of chakra. She had to admit, it _ was _interesting to watch a medical legend work, even if she would rather be anywhere but in the women’s office reviving dead animals. 

Under the kunoichi’s fingertips, the once stationary scales began to shift slightly, the animal's stomach stuttered once, twice, and then with a jerk, the fish sprang to life. 

“You have the chakra control for it, but it’s your unwillingness to listen that’s halting your progress.” Sakura felt a heat in her stomach, rowling like boiled water at the other woman’s comment. As Tsunade’s back was turned, setting the fish down in a tank behind her desk, Sakura allowed her features to twist into a snarl. 

How dare the blonde tell her that **she ** was the one who was unwilling to listen? If she recalled correctly, _ she _wasn’t the one who forced a girl into being her apprentice, the thought left a bitter taste in her mouth. Wiping her hands off on a towel, Tsunade turned back to see her student diligently waiting for her with a neutral expression. 

A painfully fake expression. 

“Here, give me your hands.” Her striking eyes met Sakura’s as she sighed in what sounded like a mix of exasperation and defeat, though what she was defeated by, her student hadn’t a clue. 

Larger hands riddled with scars and covered by calluses gripped her’s with the gentle touch of a medic prodding a wound. Her hands were positioned once again in front of her, though this time there was no fish to heal. 

“Now summon the chakra, _ slowly. _” And Sakura started at the softer (kind) tone, lacking the gruff edge Tsunade so frequently used when ordering her student around. It was like something had shifted. 

Sakura wasn’t paying attention when the green light slowly flickered to life, coating her fingers in its iridescent glow. It felt like her heart had skipped a beat, but not because of the reasons protagonists in romance novels experienced this. It was a small strike of lightning-like fear that had spiked through her organs at the thought that perhaps something had shifted. 

Perhaps Tsunade had somehow seen her face transform behind her back. Perhaps she knew of Sakura’s animosity towards the entire concept of healing. It shouldn’t have been surprising given her carefully carved mask and it’s absolute lack of enthusiasm for her training, but it still disturbed her. 

She was used to low-level chunin who could barely detect the genjutsu she would use to conceal her sleeping figure during lessens. She was used to being surrounded by children and incompetent shinobi who couldn’t detect her true emotions behind each show of teeth or pulling of her lips. 

But Tsunade was a high-level kunoichi practically bred for warfare, skilled enough to hide from her past teacher whenever the subject of the Hokage’s successor arose. 

It was foolish to think she would be able to protect her innermost thoughts from the woman, but still, she had hoped. What had she seen? When she looked at Sakura what did she see? Could she see the bitterness, the anger, the hurt? Could she see her desperate need to push herself farther and farther and as far as she could? 

_ No, _ she swallowed the bile crawling up her throat. _ She hasn’t seen anything. Anything at all. _

She deepened her breathing, playing it off as the stress of using the mystical palm technique, to slowly calm her heart down. Her focus slid back into place and her eyes shuttered close, hoping her teacher saw it as a way of her concentrating instead of hiding away like she was. 

Counting to ten in her head, Sakura listened to the commands of the sannin before her, relaxing her back, spreading her fingers, and focusing on the pit of energy in her chest. Focused on pulling from it like pulling strings from a ball of yarn, unraveling it as she threaded the stream of light to the end of each finger. 

“Good. It seems you’ve finally managed to do it right.” Tsunade’s voice broke her from her thoughts. Eyes opening, her trance was broken. Blinking rapidly, she adjusted to the light just in time to watch her teacher bustle around the room, haphazardly collecting an armful of scattered scrolls. One of which, Sakura notes with a slight bit of amusement, was stuffed halfway through the closed window. 

The sannin dumped them into Sakura’s arms with little warning, causing her to stumble over her own feet and nearly fall flat on her face. Straightening, she stretched her neck to see over the mountain of parchment she was now carrying. 

“Thank you Senju-san..?” 

Rolling her eyes, the blonde retorted “Have those scrolls memorized by the end of the week or you’ll be completing your first D rank mission. I’ve heard the Daimyo’s wife has lost her cat again…” 

Sakura took back what she said about Tsunade being kind. She was a witch someone should drop a house on. 

“I’ll be sure to finish the assignment in the time limit.” Smiling with saccharine sweetness, she tried her hardest to portray her wish to stab her teacher with only her eyes. 

Sakura’s mood only darkened as Tsunade smirked smugly at her, obviously not seeing her as a threat. _ One of these days, _ she muttered lowly to herself as she exited the office, _ I’m going to poison her food and _ ** _then _ ** _ we’ll see who’s patronizing who. _

* * *

  


In the end, Sakura decided against going straight home like she usually did. Being the obsessive academic she was, she hadn’t bothered to wait until home to start pouring over the scrolls. She had nearly walked into two separate poles on her way from the hospital to where she was now situated before Konoha’s one massive library. It turns out, through a series of unfortunate events, one of those two poles was not, in fact, a pole but a person. 

Times like these made her immensely happy that her training went until sunset, she was not sure if she could live down that incident if anyone else had been around to see it. 

More importantly, it seemed that the scrolls documented the process of healing on a higher level than what was usually commissioned to genin students studying medical ninjutsu. She supposed it was a perk of being the student of Tsunade Senju, a woman who also expected her to move at a much faster pace than ordinary genin do. 

The information was mostly based around blood vessels and how they interacted with a person’s chakra circulation. Much like blood, chakra spread out from a source, the core located in the chest area, and moved like spiderweb cracks through a person’s circulatory system. Due to both systems being so closely intertwined, healing a wound affecting one could disrupt the other and cause the patient’s death. It was an important and fundamental understanding for all medics to learn at a young age to avoid such mistakes. 

But there was also potential there for something she was sure Tsunade would not approve of. Not that Sakura cared, that is. Medical ninjutsu was fine and dandy but medics were ridiculous to not see the potential there! You could tear apart someone’s organs with a touch of your finger, pop an enemy shinobi’s blood vessels with the faintest touch of green chakra, yet it was there foolish oaths that kept them from doing it. 

Destroying an entire platoon of Iwa-nin with one super-powered punch was fine, but using medical techniques to harm someone, _ that _ was worthy of imprisonment? For _ execution? _These people had the potential to end the war with the power they wielded at their fingertips and by not using that advantage, they have and continue to be, slaughtered on the battlefield. 

A coldness seeped through her expression as she shouldered her way through the library’s doors. She had no intention of dying in that damn war. She could do so much for Konoha if she developed a jutsu that could disable opponents using their blood and chakra systems at the same time. Ideas swarmed her mind as she took a seat in the back of the now-abandoned building, even the librarian had already left. 

(The library wasn’t usually busy or visited by many people, it was why she hid there so many times as a kid. Katachi, the leader of her female bullies, thought it was just hilarious to dump her books into the academy toilets, and therefore Sakura found some sick pleasure in hiding with those very books in the only building that was filled with them. Katachi could take as many things as she wanted from her classmate and destroy every one of them, but Sakura’s superior knowledge and hunger for learning were things that would never be stolen from her. No matter how many times she was threatened to “stop making us look bad with your big, ugly head.”)

Settling into her seat, Sakura spread out her dozens of scrolls along the table. She picked through the rolls of parchment looking for the one she had seen on her walk there, the one documenting the role of chakra in a shinobi’s bloodstream when using soldier pills. It was interesting in its talk of logistics when it came to soldier pills, something that can be very dangerous, even deadly if used improperly. 

It was not for the intended purpose that she wanted the scroll, it was due to what it revealed about chakra in someone’s blood. Chakra could bend and mold to hundreds of different forms, if not thousands, and the moment of inspiration she had standing in front of the building she now resides inside asked the important question, “Could chakra mold to someone’s blood vessels?” 

She wasn’t considered a prodigy due to her physical lack of talent, yet she was mentally more than suitable to be a genius. Not that anyone would know that until they saw the new technique she was crafting for Konoha's enemies. It would be a shock. For a little medical-nin genin, unknown to even those in her age group, to suddenly join a battle with a new form of warfare that hadn’t been used since the time of the hidden villages’ founding. 

Her chakra thrummed at her fingertips in excitement. 

Finally, her hands reached the correct scroll, rolling it open to begin devouring its teachings. Because this scroll might just be able to show her how to enter her chakra into someone else’s bloodstream. She could kill them from the inside out, tearing apart their organs and crushing their bones to dust, with hardly any effort at all. 

The only problem was her situation as a genin. She hardly had the knowledge to pull off a jutsu where she could control her medical chakra from a distance. Normal chakra? Sure, most ninjutsu were simply made up of the user’s chakra, of which was forged into a new shape and controlled from a distance. Medical ninjutsu, in particular, was usually used surrounding the medic’s hands and held close to the patient’s injuries, therefore meaning she would the help of someone else more experienced in the field of experimental science and biology than she was. 

For now, Sakura was content to pour over the information before her and theorize the concept of what she would be attempting. Finding someone willing to ignore the moral and legal codes the jutsu would break and still be accessible to her, was not going to be easy. 

Then again, sometimes the person you're looking for is right below your nose and you just can’t see them yet. 

* * *

“I solemnly swear to do my duty, gifted to me by the Lord Hokage, in serving my village to the best of my physical and mental ability. I will serve Konoha and only Konoha, following the instructions of the Hokage above all else, and complete the orders handed to me by the leader of Konoha’s hospital. I will use my ninjutsu only to heal the wounded and sick, never to do harm. If ever this oath is to be broken by myself, let me suffer the rightful punishment for my crimes. I bow to my teacher in thanks for the endowment of the art of healing they have bestowed upon me.” 

Sakura’s voice cut off as she dropping herself into a lavish bow, making certain her form was perfect and her voice had not once faltered. 

“Your teacher commends your great devotion to your sworn duty and give to you the right to perform lawful medicinal practices in service to your nation. Arise and accept the teachings of the Hippocratic Oath.” Tsunade stood tall and proud before the Hokage, veiled by his gray smoke, who looked on with a similar expression.

Something wound tight and aching in her chest at the sight. Two people, so strong and legendary that the other nation’s feared ever meeting them in battle, standing here and watching her finish her transition into true womanhood with nothing but support and kindness. 

And for the first time, she made an exception to the rule. Not all prodigies were horrid, these two before her didn’t seem to be. _ Just most of them, _ she told herself, _ just most of them. _She would never admit the guilt the squeezed her insides, flipping her already knotted stomach, unwanted and ignored as the sensation was. She pushed down the unbridled feelings and unsealed her lips to complete the transition. The end of her childhood, at least officially. For the age a child gained the responsibility to kill another human being, they lost whatever it was that made them a child in the first place. 

“I accept.”


	4. Snakes of a Scale, Cluster to Asail

They called this month the “Rookie Rush.” 

Apparently, it was the time of year where new academy students were unleashed upon the world as genin. Sakura, being a genin herself, could confirm without a doubt that the whole of Konoha should fear the day each class graduated. She had been worried about a lack of developing her skills now that she was a “medic-nin,” but it seemed as if the worrying was entirely unneeded. She may have only improved in dodging projectiles during the last few weeks, but these kids didn’t look to have improved at all. In _ any _area. 

Wiping yet another bedpan clean, she listened to the monotone buzzing of the fan and the quiet that remained unbroken. The hospital had obviously never been a place she cared much to be involved with, but it was calming. The white walls were smooth to the touch and allowed her eyes to rest compared to the vibrant green grass covering the ground outside and the rather obnoxious colors some of the newest shinobi were wearing. 

Honestly, who the hell ever heard of a shinobi dressed in _ orange _ ever accomplishing _ anything. _

Her prior classmates were utterly ridiculous, their very first missions and they had already ended up in hospital beds from their mediocre skill sets. If she hadn’t become an apprentice, she gritted her teeth at the thought, she would be completing those missions with a blindfold and two broken legs. 

Bitterness won’t do anything, she reminded herself like a broken record, be grateful you’re a shinobi at all. 

Because she really was lucky. Being a shinobi and being cannon fodder were two very different things. Hoji, Michi, and Suchi, triplets from a small clan-based in Konoha’s outskirts, were prime examples of this. Their younger brother was far more talented despite being a year younger and their father must have realized the predicament he was in. Three lackluster daughters who were before his son in the line of succession, three daughters he would now send out on a rather unbalanced genin team to the front lines. Like pigs to the slaughter, they wondered forward to the butcher with only cardboard smiles and misty eyes. They put up no fight. Because a daughter always knows when their parents love them. It’s instinctual and Sakura was certain they shared the same understanding of their father as she did hers. 

So those little piglets trotted towards their death and not one person told them to turn around. 

Cannon fodder. It’s what most kunoichis end up being, no matter how brilliantly they began. The teachers would always see the boys' talent before they noticed that of a girl’s, it was how it had always been. 

Sakura knew for a fact that other people had noticed the way the girls were pushed onto the teams with the less skilled and mostly unknown jonin teachers and the teams packed full of boys were handed the cream of the crop. It burned like acid in her blood, if there was one thing that people like her realized early on, it was that nothing was ever fair. So don’t bother trying to be a good person. You’ll get nothing for it. 

It showed in the teams she had helped patch up. Some idiotic kid had thought it funny to put an exploding tag in their teammate's kunai pouch while painting a house. Their teacher had burst through the hospital doors with a little boy hardly older than five, in his arms. He was screaming for help, the child was bleeding out from the dozens of shuriken poking from his flesh. Listening to the pained whimpers of that tiny child was one of the hardest things she had ever been forced to do. She had assisted another more experienced nurse with soothing the boy while the doctor stitched up each wound. 

His eyes had been wide, red veins peeking from their edges as he went into shock, little fingers trembling in panic as his heart rate picked up. His breaths came out as little pants, sounding so much like a wounded puppy, his body had been gruesome to behold. Flaps of skin that tore like paper, gently resting like curtains over the harsh metallic glare of weapons digging through the muscle of his stomach and back. The skin had blackened around the edges, infected, puss leaking from the edges and pooling in a yellow, sweet substance on the table. 

He had been merely walking past the property, doing nothing that warranted his fate. This wasn’t even remotely his fault, yet he was the one who suffered for it. Life wasn’t fair, the mantra repeated in her head as a young genin walked by with only a small bandage over his cheek. _ It just wasn’t fair. _

She would never forget the look on the boy's face when he saw the body bag being wheeled to the morgue. A body bag much too small for a man or woman. 

Guilt had glinted in his red eyes for a moment, only a moment, before he turned and continued on his way. Like this wasn’t all his fault. 

It _ burned _in her, the anger that she felt watching him, it consumed every thought she had until all she saw was red. 

When the haze of crimson finally subsided, she was met with the worried face of Dr. Sansuki and his hands gently tugging the halves of the side table from her hands. 

It reminded her exactly why she was breaking every rule there was for medics, in creating the jutsu she was. It was so the damn war would finally end and children would be allowed to have a childhood instead of going off to fight other people’s battles before they had their first kiss. So she would never need to see another body bag that small be dragged through the hospital because an irresponsible twelve-year-old was given a dangerous weapon before they gained the maturity to use it wisely.

She may have hit a roadblock along the technique’s development, but it wouldn’t stop her for very long. All she needed was someone to help her with the application of molding medical chakra. The logistics of diffusing her energy through the layer of skin and muscle human bodies possessed and keeping the body from fighting or rejecting the presence, had already been sorted out. It wasn’t exactly a complicated application of skill, in fact, the only reason someone hadn’t already invented and used it was because the oaths they would need to disregard in the process.

Perhaps they were nobler than her, caring so deeply about outdated concepts like that. But Sakura cared much more about stopping the conflict eating Konoh’a children alive, thank you. 

Not long after she finished cleaning the equipment in the hospital room and was ready to head off to the next, Tsunade decided with a smug grin that she should go drinking with her teacher. 

(Tsunade was smart when she showed kindness. It wasn’t hard to see how shaken the young genin was from the team she had treated earlier. She invited Sakura to a drink, not because she wanted the alcohol, but because it was something Sakura could easily justify as being dragged into doing for her teacher’s benefit. It allowed her to pretend she wasn’t accepting help.)

Technically a genin was legal, it was a law the village had put into action after the First Great Shinobi War. Legal in every sense, not just regarding liquor. Needed to replenish the population, they said. If girls are old enough to kill, they’re old enough to have children, they said. And if a fourteen-year-old named Igakure Kitsuke became pregnant with the child of her genin teacher a year later, then how could the council be blamed for that? If she committed suicide and left her daughter an orphan to be raised by her grandmother, the council had never wished that on anyone. And if Mebuki Kitsuke followed in her mother’s footsteps of having a child young? Well, that was obviously her own choice. At least Mebuki had married the man who fathered her child, but whether or not they loved their daughter was an entirely different question.

It was a disgusting cycle and she wasn’t sure how anyone could be so committed to a village riddled with flaws. In truth, she wished she was like them because it was so much harder to live life with the weight on her shoulders that hardly had anything to with her at all. Pretentious to think she was not “one of the masses” or whatever, but there was nothing enjoyable about seeing the blood dripping across petals while everyone else saw beautiful roses. 

“Loosen up, Sakura, you’re stiff as a board.” The blonde drawled over the white-rimmed cup of sake perched between her fingers. Her eyes reminded Sakura of a cat’s. A cat who knew exactly where you were hiding the catnip and would rather watch you with condescending humor than actually go and get it. 

Swirling her drink, she raised her eyebrows at the older women. Gently swishing her fruity concoction she pointedly didn’t mention that the glass her mentor was not so subtly trying to egg her into drinking from didn’t contain the slightest bit of alcohol. Sakura, who didn’t absolutely fail at being discreet, had asked the bartender to leave out the liquor when Tsunade’s back was turned. 

Squeezing her lips together to conceal the smile threatening to spread across her mouth, she knocked back a large gulp of the multi-flavored juice, much to Tsunade’s delight. It had earned her a conspiratory grin and quick “You probably shouldn’t tell your parents about this,” the blond knocked back her own drink, one that was very much an alcoholic beverage. 

“I hope you don’t mind, my sweet, adoring apprentice, but I invited an old friend to join us.” 

Right, this is why she doesn’t trust her teacher in the slightest. With the enjoyment Tsunade seemed to be getting from telling her this, she was guessing the entire point of inviting whoever it was, was to make her socially inept apprentice squirm. 

It wasn't not working.

“Friend…” She skeptically mused. “I had no idea you had friends, my beautiful, doting sensei.” 

She ducked just in time to miss the chair that splintered against the nearest wall. 

“I have _ friends.” _

Biting back her laughter, Sakura smoothed her features into the most serious, unreadable mask she could. Pausing for dramatic effect, she replied, “I find it hard enough to believe you have a singular friend.”

This time, she dodged the whole fucking table. 

“Watch it brat, alcohol only makes me stronger.”

“Ya, stronger. That’s what I’d call it.” She muttered into her glass, the bartender was now behind them having a bit of a heart attack over the damage to his establishment. Poor guy's entire face was turning purple. She nearly recommended he visit the hospital to get it checked out, but well… It was a medic-nin who _ did _it, so maybe not. 

(The man glared at them as they moved to a new table and Sakura definitely absolutely did _ not _leave a couple thousand ryo on one of the remaining chairs after swiping it from the pocket of her very inebriated teacher’s haori.) 

“Tsunade-hime, don’t get drunk without us!” The bar’s door swung open with a bang against the wall, startling one of the patrons into dropping his drink. A tall man, certainly past six feet tall _ at least, _who’s spiky white hair was currently bouncing behind him, came strolling in. The red paint that ran halfway down his cheeks from his eyes stretched as he grinned larger than Sakura thought possible. 

His dark, shadowed eyes found hers as she watched him over the rim of her cup. 

“Ah… And who might you be?” The look in his eyes shifted, like a predator setting his sights on its prey. He would be disappointed to realize she wasn’t _ anyone's _prey. She allowed her eyelids to hood her irises, playing along to the game he had started. 

The light that flashed behind his eyes told her he was used to this dance but he wasn’t used to anyone else joining him, let alone knowing the steps. 

“Is this your friend?” She slyly turned to face Tsunade, allowing her neck to arch in a way she already knew would entice him. He was an older man but the academy had taught her how to be appealing to the opposite gender when she was barely seven and she’d be damned if she let him beat her at this fast-paced waltz. 

Tsunade’s expression showed she clearly knew what her student was doing but whether or not she approved, Sakura couldn’t tell. Her next words did give a hint, however. 

Locking eyes with the incredibly easy to identify male sannin, famous among all of Konoha's shinobi, and her teammate since she was a child, she shrugged, “Nope.”

Sakura nearly choked on her drink. 

Jiraiya _ did _choke on air. 

“Jiraiya, do compose yourself. You are the student of the esteemed Lord Hokage, not an uneducated ignoramus.” 

In swept a - well Sakura knew Tsunade’s other teammate was a male but by looks, she honestly couldn’t tell - _figure_ dressed in a lilac and white patterned yukata. Despite their gender - it hardly mattered whether he was a male or female anyway- he was certainly what she would define as lovely and elegant. The way he held himself was a complete one-eighty from the loud, rambunctious air that Jiraiya seemed to embody. 

They were picture perfect opposites, like yin and yang. 

The first boasting white hair, tall stature, and emanating masculinity. 

The second maintained long, silken black locks, an effeminate build, and endowed with an exotic magnetism. 

One filled the room with brightness and cheer, while the other slid between each shadow and avoided the socially responsive patrons. A lick of warmth, like a small flame, touched her eyes as she watched the way they seemed to gravitate towards each other, even when one of them was complaining to her mentor for her “callus” introduction before such a “voluptuous” young woman. 

Tsunade wasn’t immune to the pull either. Not when she was leaning her elbow on the table, her chin propped against her hand, so far to the edge of her seat that Sakura feared she would fall off it any second. Subconsciously, she moved to be closer to them without any prompting or need. It was just… Instinct. 

They certainly seemed like a team. There was a strand of longing there. The bitterness, the rage of being assigned to where she was, had faded. That thread was all that was left of it. She watched her fuchsia-colored drink swirl around the few remaining ice cubes. It was the reason she had been angry in the first place. Because she longed for the feeling of a team. Of depending on others and knowing for a fact that they would always do their best to come through for you. She had hoped to find a family among her peers, a family she had never had among her blood relatives. 

She pushed the envy down into the depths of her mind and chose to distract herself with the men and woman before her. Jiraiya seemed to end his teasing match with Tsunade, sliding into the seat beside her. He was surprisingly graceful for a man of his size. The way he leaned back in his chair, practically draping his limbs over the wood showed an easy confidence built over the course of two decades. 

Orochimaru, in contrast, adroitly settled into the chair across from her, curling into himself with the practiced poise of a snake. She could clearly understand his choice in summons, something that most likely had to do with the traditions of his clan and why his eyes also resembled those of a reptile. The facepaint was meant to deter others from interacting with him and on the battlefield, it was to unnerve his opponents. 

But Sakura was not repulsed by his strange features, she was intrigued. 

He was different than the other child prodigies. The villagers who passed him on the street gave him a wider berth than polite, the civilian parents whispered of his inhuman abilities and unworldly looks. Tsunade was needed to teach her, the Hokage forced her respect, and Jiraiya was fun to play with, but none were people who she genuinely approved of. They were given everything they are because of being blessed with talent and good social skills at birth. 

They hadn’t worked for that. 

But Orochimaru had. By the looks he received when in public, it was easy for her to see they were similar. If adults treated him like this than as a child he most certainly was treated worse, and becoming one of the strongest shinobi of the leaf village despite all of that absolutely garnered true respect from her. 

He fascinated her, and it appeared mutual. 

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one enticed by the new company. Orochimaru’s slanted irises focused on her despite the loud conversation buzzing around them. Jiraiya’s voice was above an average level and Tsunade seemed to be matching his tone, while they parleyed, she allowed her focal point to shift to the other man. 

It was the strange way he examined her. Not in a romantic sense, but rather as an evaluation. If she didn’t know better, she’d say that he was determining whether or not she was fit to be Tsunade’s apprentice. She wondered absently, whether or not she passed. 

“You’re one of Senju-san’s friends?” She tilted her head without breaking eye contact and Orochimaru continued to stare with his unreadable expression. 

“I am a teammate of hers.”

Ah, so this was how he wanted to frame it? Pretend that he didn’t look at her like a proud older brother looks at their sister. They were family, but he seemed like the kind of person to hide behind boundaries. Like her, she supposed. They really were alike. 

And from what she’d heard of his morals, perhaps that alikeness could work to her benefit. And everything clicked. A sannin was without a doubt powerful and experienced enough to understand how to create jutsu, not to mention he had certainly done it before. Orochimaru, in particular, was known for his viscousness in extracting information from enemy shinobi, leading many to question how far he was willing to go before recognizing a line he could not cross. 

She had read about the techniques they used in T&I for interrogations and if Orochimaru was doing something so far from the norm, then his morals were most probably a valid concern for Konohan citizens to have. And perhaps he wouldn’t be so averse to experimenting with a forbidden art like offensive medical ninjutsu was. 

She had found the missing piece. With his help, she would be able to finish the jutsu far before she was ever employed on a mission. 

Gazing at each other across the table, the two shinobi studied the figure sitting before them. A feral interest that was mutually shared and perhaps would be mutually beneficial if Sakura played her cards right. 

After a half an hour of Tsunade and jiraiya’s conversation which always seemed to tip towards arguing at some point or another, Sakura slipped away from the table. Excusing herself, she mentioned the restroom before getting up and leaving the whole building. They may have been the Sannin, but paying attention to their surroundings when they're so entranced with each other seemed to be a problem for them. 

When she turned down the ally beside the bar, she wasn’t surprised in the least to find herself followed. 

“Can I help you with something, Orochimaru-san?” 

His thin brow arched as he regarded her. He seemed to be searching for something within her eyes, a satisfied look crossing his features as he appeared to find it. Rocking back on his heels, his gaze pierced through her with its perceptiveness. 

“It is what I can do for you that I believe you are interested in. Am I correct, Sakura-san.”

She gave him a rueful grin, “You're certainly as sharp as everyone always says.”

He didn’t seem all that impressed by the statement. “I am not one for small talk.”

“Yes, of course. It’s a well-known fact among the villagers that you harbor a great interest in jutsu creation…” His interest was piqued, she could tell. Hook, line, and sinker. “I may have a proposition you would be interested in pursuing…”

Thus toppled the domino that shattered the wheel.


	5. Something coming, something big, something hidden, something missed

  
“Your issues stem from your attempts to enter a rejectable substance into a foreign bloodstream while believing that its mere presence will accomplish your goal.”

“That is how poisons work, is it not? How else could I do it?” Her frustration was mounting, straining her voice. Agitation scratching along her senses like claws across tender skin, at his constant hovering and comments of her doing it wrong or improperly, even though she was trying her hardest.

It was like he didn’t think she was trying like he didn’t think she could do it! Like she was just not good enough for him and he was getting irritated because she just wasn’t what he had been expecting and she was disappointing him-

It was a bit frightening how well Orochimaru seemed to be able to read her.

His gaze cut into her, slicing through the thoughts pounding in her head. And the thundering words seemed to fizzle out into nothing as their eyes held each other in a clash of verdigris and aurous.

Like a dog, it seemed as though this man, this warrior, could sense her emotions by merely being in her presence. Or perhaps like a snake. It was the same disarming and equally alarming quality her teacher possessed. They had grown up together, the other sannin, Jiraiya, most likely had the same ability.

Sakura was sure it would never cease to unsettle her. It was another person peering into your emotions, your personal feelings, without you allowing them access or your consent.

But he did not scare her. Unsettle her? Yes. But not scare. He didn’t seem cruel or maniacal, he just seemed… Sad. Very very sad.

“You seem to be forgetting, to use a jutsu such as this, your chakra must be consumed by the victim. Orientating the mechanics of your power as that of poison will cause the host to immediately reject the alien substance.”

Her companion’s exasperation at her “slowness” was particularly obvious when he sighed in the long-suffering and melodramatic way he was prone to. Beckoning her over, he patiently gestured to her hands, of which Sakura immediately summoned green chakra from.

Orochimaru may have been disliked for his ruthlessness in battle and rather condescending mannerisms but to her, he was… He reminded her a lot of herself. She watched his expressions closely as he observed the fluctuating of the light at her fingertips, seemingly blind to the rest of the world as he watched the iridescence flow into the trout’s flesh.

He was angry at the world. Simmering in wait, like a snake hidden among the leaves. How appropriate. The villagers certainly had a way of alienating and installing bitterness teetering on hatred, within it’s most powerful shinobi. The whispers that followed his steps every time he as much as walked to the Hokage’s office, they were suffocating. Surrounding him at every side and becoming louder as he moved farther from their source like they were chasing him away with crude words and heartless japes.

They had no right to disrespect a war hero. No right to dismiss the man that sacrificed everything he could to keep them safe. They had no right.

Prodigy or not, he didn’t deserve the way they treated him. Like a chained animal they only ever let out when an enemy needed to be taken care of. Starving him for years so he was especially vicious when finally released, a caged monster with only the purpose of killing and destruction.

  
How could they condemn him for being a beast if all they ever did was treat him like one? If all they ever did was punish him for trying to be anything else?

His chains were the duty and loyalty he held for a home who, quite frankly, didn’t deserve it. It was an entirely different kind of prison, one that would never be escaped because it was embedded far below his skin and carved into each of his organs.

Embedded in him like a disease. And it fucking pissed Sakura off.

“Now, begin multiplying the blood plasma cells. Leave the white and red blood cells be for the moment, instead focus on adding an addition mutational gene. The process follows the same core steps as giving a patient immunity to a disease…”

His voice became a comforting hum in the background as Sakura’s lids slid shut and her focus sharpened on the fish’s corpse, stimulating the growth of certain cells and causing mutations as Orochimaru led her through each step.

For a man who lacked the talent for summoning medical chakra, the Sannin made quite an impressive teacher concerning the subject, the bemused thought fluttered through her mind.

Her hard work was finally seeming to pay off in regards to her jutsu creation.

After weeks of covert meetings behind closed doors, sweat beading across her brow as she painstakingly kept her chakra flickering in a corpse four feet to her right, and slipping out of training with her teacher whenever she was able, the progress had become a tangible difference.

The distance she could control medical chakra from was expanding, as was her control over the blood in the fish’s veins that she practiced on. Sakura had even been able to cause a twitch in the dead animal. Just a small jerk, but it was something. Something tangible she could hold onto as a sign of her improving skills.

That night, she allowed herself to collapse into bed for the first time since her partnership with Orochimaru had begun. Too many nights spent sleeping bent over cold metal desks or even once on the floor because she had fainted from chakra exhaustion and her partner had decided to leave her there. Hadn’t wanted to wake her, he claimed, but Sakura wasn’t fooled by his faked concern, the sannin was a lot of things, but compassionate was not one of them.

In addition to her work within his sterile labs, Tsunade also seemed to be quite pleased with how easily Sakura was taking to the new fighting style being taught to her. Everyone who knew anything about the shinobi war was well aware of Tsunade’s famed super strength, a part of her arsenal that had saved her platoon’s collective ass plenty of times.

She had to admit, there had been a spark of something close to excitement pulse through her when she was informed that she would be inheriting that impressive strength. It almost felt like hope, hope she wouldn’t be stuck as a medic forever. Once she ended her apprenticeship with Tsunade, she would be free to pursue whatever life path she wanted. Her teacher would be in the past and no longer hold any control of Sakura. If she chose to forget all about her medical training and enter the war as a front line taijutsu fighter, there was nothing the Sannin or the Hokage could do to stop her.

The Hokage needed as many fighters as he could get his hands on due to the war raging beyond Konoha’s walls, he was far too clever to refuse a well-trained shinobi’s request to join the fight despite any personal feelings he may hold.

As the moon shone in bright strips of light through her large window, the one situated beside her bed, she allowed her eyes to flutter shut. The slivers of starlight just barely visible through her eyelids were a welcome change to the darkness she had grown used to falling asleep to. Her “scientific colleague” owned quite an impressive array of medical equipment, informational scrolls, and chemical compounds scattered throughout his laboratory, but a window didn’t seem to be something he was interested in investing in.

Collapsing from exhaustion in a dark lab where the only candles still lit at that time of night, burn out and cause the succumbing to sleep in the first place, easily worsened her mental state. Sleeping in her large, comfortable bed at a reasonable time would do a good deal in helping her to recover from the strain of the last few weeks.

Lost in dreams of victorious battles and leading platoons through muddied tents, disarming enemies, and being praised as a war hero, the small figure slipped through the crack under her door, unseen.

Its small form slithered through the baren space acting as both a kitchen and living room. Once again squeezing under a door, this time Sakura’s bedroom door, it approached silently with an explicit purpose.

A presence tickled the edge of the young woman’s awareness, something… Powerful. Old and experienced, seasoned by war. In fact, it felt like- Like something she knew.

Something that tickled at the back of her mind, a memory wriggling to free itself. Her brow furrowed in confusion, body tensed and fist tightening over her sheets, Sakura waited as the presence approached her back. Hairs prickled upwards in an erect position, and she worked hard to keep her breathing as steady as the beat of her hammering heart.

Counting the pulses in wait, fear creeping slowly along her senses, Sakura laid among her sheets and desperately grasped at the tendrils of something, some memory that seemed so important for some reason.

One

Two

Three

Fo-

The tightening of her muscles loosened as her heart ceased it’s pounding. Any panic she had felt ebbed away as well, the familiarity of the now identified figure was soothing for the girl who had nearly leaped for her weapons pouch across the room (after grabbing the kunai under her pillow, shuriken in the folds of her sheets, and senbon sown into the fabric of her lampshade, of course).

“Kami, Katsuyu, you nearly gave me a heart attack.” She groaned, lifted her aching body from the warm confines of her comforter. Her gaze was mournful as she accepted her fate, whatever Tsunade wanted, Sakura sleeping was most likely not going to be part of it.

“I apologize deeply, Sakura-sama. I did not mean to frighten you.” Sakura bent over to offer an open palm to the rather large slug. Katsuyu bobbed an eye stock in thanks before smoothly moving onto Sakura’s hand. Scooping up the summons, Sakura rested her hands on her knees, dangling her feet over the side of the bed. It was the only furniture that her meager savings had allowed her.

“I’m a shinobi, I should have sensed you.” Her lips quirked at the bobbing slug, Katsuyu’s left eye folded back into the stalk before emerging once again in what seemed to be a slug equivalent of winking.

It was a strangely endearing action, even with its briefness.

“So what brings you here at such a time of night?” Dramatically flaring her arm, Sakura sarcastically gestured to her meager lodging. Katsuyu had taken the time to visit her late into the night rather than wait for morning, something unusual even for Tsunade’s summons.

It wasn’t the first time the slug had been summoned to wake her up or bring her to a new location for training, but it was always sometime before the sun abandoned the sky to the moon. Being forced to clean tracks of slime off her already stained hardwood floors and wash the bedsheets Katsuyu sometimes materialized on, was both taxing and completely unnecessary.

At this point, she had given up on trying to talk some sense into either the summons or the summoner about other methods of communication or just not dirtying her apartment more than it constantly was. Sakura had also given up on trying to find a soap that could take slime out of fabric after the fifth store attendant had asked if she was, “one of those special civilian folk.” Whatever the hell that meant in a village with a woman who could crush mountains with her hands, and a world where a fox with nine tails could blast giant rockets out of its damn mouth.

(Nevermind that Sakura was fairly certain she knew what “special civilian folk” meant. Especially when the women had glanced so unsubtly at the headband gleaming against her forehead. The woman was a civilian, but Sakura was a civilian who wanted to be a… kunoichi. It was the same way the clan kids looked at her hiate. She was a kunoichi who was born a… civilian.)

Apparently, she had discovered through the worker’s subconscious mumbling while very pointedly not running away, that there was another man who came in regularly in regards to buying “dog toys” for wolves.

Whatever the hell that man was on, Sakura would appreciate being on it too, thanks.

“A scroll bestowed by Tsunade-sama. She impressed upon me the urgency of its delivery and that convenience was not an option.”

Her awareness slid into focus on her slug companion.

Urgency?

A- a mission? At this time of night? Why now? Had something happened? The thoughts were buzzing through her head at rapid-fire, fleeting and hard to think twice about with so many other worries clouding her mind.

A war was currently waging that eventually would need the female Sannin who was now doubling as a teacher for her as well as a fierce warrior seasoned for battle. Konoha’s forces must be missing her then, right?

That’s why they would be calling her in, to check her progress and whether her idea for a combat medic per squad was a good one and to help them with the harder and more complex missions that only the very best ninjas could accomplish. They may have the other two Sannin out on the field most of the time, but Tsunade is sure to be sorely missed for her healing abilities and poison dexterity that rivaled even the poison mistress of Sunagakure.

Sakura still hadn’t seen any action since graduating the academy, despite the horrors raging on beyond her village’s gates. Was Tsunade finally going to send her out to earn her place as a shinobi, not just in name, but in practice?

Even though she had been a genin for far longer than most were before taking their first mission, she was also training under a Sannin. Perhaps that was the plan. Train her apprentice until she was at a good place and then skip the D-ranks most squads built up from and jump straight into the c-ranks.

Tsunade’s patience was a beautiful and quite fleeting thing. Sakura had made quick friends with it in the short time they had together, and that small window had been heavenly. In regards to patiently supervising a mundane, low-level mission within the village gates, Sakura had doubts that she would be completing the same prosaic assignments as her classmates.

Emotion swelled in her chest at the thought. A real mission. Finally, she would be getting experience, maybe even helping the war effort. Finally, she would be in combat situations where her work in dodging and learning to channel chakra into her fists could be put to proper use. Her heartbeat began to accelerate, but this time not due to fear, and her teeth clenched in her attempt to squash the smile of excitement from blossoming on her lips.

Katsuyu gave only a nod to Sakura before she began to regurgitate the Sannin’s missive.

Sakura hadn’t realized that slugs could… writhe in that way.

Her small mouth stretched wide, the membrane of her skin pulling taut and thin, causing a lighter shade of her aquamarine skin to appear around her features. Both eye stalks tilted back as her mouth’s corners spread farther down her cheeks and a bit of white emerged from within the slugs crevice.

A strange gliding noise, like peeling the skin from a banana, caused a tiny tremor through the summons body as the metal of the scroll and its parchment began to rise above the lip of Katsuyu’s cavity. A stringy, translucent mucus slathered the pages, threading back into the inner lining of the creature’s mouth. Her entire body gave one more convulsing shudder upwards before the roll of paper was finally able to gently slide out across the animal’s gelatinous skin and be rested in Sakura’s lap.

She winced at the slime now seeping into her pants.

“Katsuyu- I don’t mean to be impolite but- usually you appear with the scroll already… You know- out. And- clean.”

She winced a second time, but it was for her poor word choice rather than the thought of cleaning an uncleanable substance out of her favorite pajama bottoms.

“Tsunade-sama desired for this form of transporting the missive as she believes it important you familiarize yourself with the mannerisms of your future summons.” Her companion's words seem to be carefully copied from another source, no doubt the “explanation” Tsunade gave Katsuyu.

In truth, her teacher seemed to be more interested in tormenting her with horrific memories of Slug’s regurgitating scrolls, then make her comfortable with the slug summons.

With her future summons, apparently. She probably should have been angrier at that, but she was just- neutral. Sakura hadn’t put much thought into the idea of a companion for herself the way Katsuyu was a partner to the Sannin. She didn’t have a clan to pass important family secrets down to her, or a shinobi mother to present her with a summoning scroll already containing her parent’s bloody signature.

Really she didn’t have much of a mother at all or a father for that matter. Parents were no longer something she needed and therefore she had moved on from them and their petty hatred of her dreams. She supposed real parents would have supported their child despite their choice of career and do their best to love their daughter, but those weren’t the people she was birthed to.

But here Sakura was, with a strong, older woman wishing to pass down a precious heirloom with unknown value to her. The sensation was akin to steam curling in wreaths, gently warming the insides of her chest and stomach, softening the hard lines of her eyes just the slightest bit. Maybe this was what having an older sister or kind mother would be like…

The thought was sudden and uninvited and entirely unneeded.

Sakura didn’t need a mother figure or sister to raise her up, she didn’t need anyone.

She didn’t want- She did not want someone to fill that role in her life.

A lump was forming in her throat as she shoved the tangled thoughts from the forefront of her mind.

Gently lifting the scroll, the girl began to carefully unroll the spool of yellowed paper with deft hands and careful attentiveness. Her previous childish excitement and thoughts of her teacher aside, the scroll very well could contain something upsetting.

It could be a missive about her parents’ deaths by the hands of bandits while on their way from trading port to trading port in wave country.

It could be a missive about the hospitalization of her teacher, or a letter from said teacher informing Sakura that she’d been needed at the frontlines and was unable to bring a child with her.

Her hands remained steady as her eyes did not stray from the delivered document, even as the smoke signaling Katsuyu’s disappearance tinged the air around her a dull, sooty gray. She belatedly realized that the faint buzzing noise that had tinged her awareness before the vapor’s appearance had been the slug’s tilting soprano wishing her a restful night.

What if-

It could be a missive informing her that the Hokage had been made aware of her and Orochimaru’s experimentation.

This time, as her practiced fingers pulled back the first expanse of parchment, her thumb trembled violently.

_Seven thirty-five tomorrow morning, you’ll be meeting me at the Hokage’s office. Don’t be late. If you leave me alone with that old coot, I will personally make sure you learn how to put these messages into Katsuyu._

Her breath whirled from her lips in invisible swirls, the sigh was composed of a bit of disappointment, a pinch of relief, and a chunk of exasperation.

Any thoughts of being in trouble for something or other, fled as the wording of the letter sunk in. Tsunade used language in a very specific way depending on her mood. It was the only way that Sakura could get any read on her teacher at all, unlike someone like Orochimaru who’s speech remains unchanged by emotion.

The snake summoner’s tell, as Sakura was now discovering, happened to be who he spoke about and how often, instead of his word choice. The day she successfully managed to make a fish corpse jerk from a handful of feet away, he had begun talking about his teacher. She had watched on in wonder as this man of impeccable masks sported eyes that nearly glowed with new vigor, retelling the story of his sensei introducing him to the wonders of medical ninjutsu.

Orochimaru had looked- well he’d looked human, recounting those stories as if to an old friend. In fact, he’d seemed to forget she was there, off in his own little world.

Sakura had hardly spent enough time around Jiraiya to know much about him in general. When recalling any real-time spent together, only that one night at the bar where they had briefly verbally sparred before she had pulled herself and Orochimaru away to discuss more important things, came to mind. Of the few chance “meetings” they’d had as he and Tsunade stayed attached at the hip, the conversations had never lasted more than a few sentences, some pleasantries, at least one comment about her voluptuous figure, and only ever surface-level exchanges.

Sakura, like she was sure many others, had noticed the Sannin spending excessive amounts of time together lately and she could only attribute it to the new assignment Jiraiya wound be leaving on in three days' time (information she only knew because her teacher didn’t seem to care much for the Hokage’s decision to make the mission classified and strove to speak as loudly about it to her student and as often as possible whenever in the general vicinity of her past sensei). It would last a year and a half, bordering on two years, a long time for the Sannin to be apart and though they’d refuse to admit it, she could see how reluctant they were to let each other go.

War was a fearful time, even for legends.

And that was precisely why she had been so worried. Sending a summons to deliver a message to your genin student late at night without any prior warning or even a damn knock-

Just like Tsunade to kill her with the tension and suspense, all for some lackluster meeting with the Hokage.

She collapsed back into her covers, groaning as she rolled onto her side and hoped for sleep’s merciful embrace. The mission scroll found itself flung from her bed as the covers were thrown back over her chilled shoulder. Sakura was much too tired to care about a scroll she could easily pick up in the morning when she wasn’t severely disoriented due to sleep deprivation.

After all, how could she possibly know that Tsunade’s scroll changed everything.

* * *

  
The next morning, Sakura is hardly able to drag herself out of bed. The covers filled with her body heat, a soft mattress and plush pillows that were in reality not all that soft or plush but were in the mind of an exhausted young girl, made it inconceivable. 

She covered a yawn while pulling on her shirt and skirt, making the decision to forgo her hair bands and simply wear the bubblegum strands atop her shoulders instead. In favor of time, Sakura quickly shoveled an old pair of rations bars into her mouth before, exiting her apartment via the window.

Despite her overworked state, she was still able to stumble to the rooftops and begin the rather short treck to her teacher’s assigned meeting place. Only stumbling once (tripping over air and landing between two houses in the wheelbarrow of a young farmer, his cries over his cabbages followed her as she shushined away) before she had arrived, and made the leap down to the doors of the Hokage’s tower.

Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, or at least attempting to, she continued onwards, ignoring the curious glances she often attracted when in the building. If they weren’t for her pink hair, or for her being a genin that still has never gone on a mission or been placed on a team than it was due to her teacher being who she was.

Eyes had been chained to her shoulder blades since the day she decided her future, these stares were nothing compared to the eyes of her parents and the way they darkened like a sky filling with storm clouds.

The halls were mostly empty for this time of day, workers already at their desks finishing the last of their paperwork before beginning their daily duties and genin teams not yet filing in for new assignments.

The academy was really the only building in full swing at seven twenty in the morning, something Sakura absolutely didn’t miss about her days before graduation.

Finally, the door loomed above her, the one she had entered months ago to reveal her entire future shifting and evolving without her permission.

(She didn’t realize the door was, once again, going to work its magic. If she’d known, she probably would have fled, but only for a little while before admitting to herself the future she saw wasn’t worth giving up just yet. She’d come back, she always did.)

Small hands, not quite calloused enough for a kunoichi, reached up to knock, loud and firm, against the dark, aging wood.

The door had been around for as long as the village itself, strong and unbending even after all these years of service and wear. She steadied herself with a deep breath, straightening up to hide her weariness, and her eyes pinned themselves to the surface before her.

It was the strangest feeling that shuddered through her. It felt like something significant was about to happen. Something important.

“Come in, Sakura-chan.”

The handle was cool against her supple skin as she entered the room. A part of her was expecting an explosion or scream or anything when she entered the office but nothing strange awaited her. It was very anticlimactic, despite the itch against her spine that still had not gone away.

The sun streaming through the large, uncovered window planes was warm against her cheekbones and she blinked for a moment to adjust to looking at the sun rather than away from it.

The room was quiet, her entrance seeming to have ended whatever conversation was going on prior.

Tsunade stood in the corner by the window (in the same position she was in when Sakura had first met her) and of course, the Hokage sat behind his signature desk. His olive skin wrinkled and pocketed from all of his decades of work and commitment, yet his russet eyes remained as sharp as they were in his youth.

The academy had focused heavily on the founding of the village and therefore contributed significant time to teaching the students of the past and current Hokages. Like most people, Sakura had trouble seeing the benevolent warrior Sarutobi Hiruzen had once been, the pictures of him as a young man being so wildly different from his appearance now.

Yet sometimes when the Hokage’s eyes were just a tad too attentive and searching, Sakura realized just how well he was able to take down her walls and keep them declined by using that perception to his advantage. And it was those moments she saw the man whose photos the academy teachers had drilled into their heads for his impressive arsenal and legendary feats.

It was no wonder this was the man who trained the Sannin.

The pipe he was also known for, was left gently tilting from his lips while the smoke it produced was noticeably absent.

“Now that we have all arrived, may I apologize for my vagueness. Tsunade did mention her summons gave you quite a scare, my dear?”

Sakura focused her attention on restricting the red from rushing her cheeks in a flush of crimson, though the slight heat of her face told her she was not entirely successful. The Hokage didn’t laugh, but his eyes and tilted lips spoke quite clearly of his blatant amusement.

Her glare hardened on her teacher’s innocent smirk, swearing vengeance under her breath. It then dawned on her a particular phrase the man had used.

“All of us..?”

“All is commonly used to refer to groups of over three participants, therefore it is used properly in the Hokage’s proclamations.”

Sakura’s entire body jolted like she had been struck by lightning, whirling around with eyes wide open she found her mouth going slack at the two Sannin casually draped over the wall behind her.

“How-”

Her mouth snapped shut with an auditory click.

She had already shown her inability to properly sense or just notice two people directly behind her that weren’t even attempting to hide, she needn’t add to the embarrassment already consuming her mind. She nearly flinched at the realization she had done it in front of her teacher and other people her teacher held respect for. Kami, they must have thought her such a disappointment-

“Don’t let them get to you, my students are quite prone to mischief.”

Then Sarutobi chuckled in his deep, honeyed tone, shifting the stack of papers before him, he calmly watched Sakura’s facial expressions switch between the mortification she was actively feeling and a more neutral mask. It amused the God of Shinobi to see such a young child attempting an emotionless veil, something she had clearly not mastered yet, though it showed great promise and practice.

“So sensei, why’d you need to assemble the Great Legendary Sannin in your office so early in the morning? Gamakichi was disappointed we couldn’t leave for Mount Myoboku sooner.”

Jiraiya leaned against the bookcase by the door, taller than the entire structure, and comfortably covering it with his large frame. Orochimaru was situated beside him on the other side of the bookshelf, curled into a chair, not unlike his snake summons, and openly showing his disinterest in the entire situation by how little he seemed to be paying attention to the conversation.

Interestingly enough, he seemed to lean just a hair closer to the other room’s occupants once Jiraiya began to contribute his opinions.

It was endearing in a strange way Sakura did not quite understand yet. There was a special bond there that only served to confuse her because Sakura couldn’t for the life of her classify it. She would have almost called it… But her parents had never looked at each other like that- And it really had nothing to do with her, to begin with so why she cared about it, she didn’t know.

“The academy is having it’s annual inspection this morning, I hoped my students would help an old man in his normal examiner’s absence.”

Tsunade raises a brow, completely unamused by his explanation. “You want three of the most powerful shinobi in your village to inspect a school of seven-year-olds during wartime.” It wasn’t even a question, her exasperation seeming to mount as she pinched the soft of her nose.

“Young Sakura-chan, I’m pleased that you were able to join us today, I understand your training keeps you quite busy. I’m sure you all may find something of value through this experience.” The Sannin’s teacher addressed the entire room with his cryptic words but his eyes were directed at only one of them.

And it wasn’t her.

They were going to a building of academy students to inspect their progress, what could possibly be of value there? Other than the very valuable education of the future generation, of course. Was this some kind of life lesson he was trying to teach them? Like the wise old men from the storybooks, she used to read as a young child when her mother braided her hair, as rare as that experience was.

The Hokage almost seemed eccentric enough to force his students through something like this purely to teach them of some obscure message that had nothing to do with the task at all. And Sakura was quite possibly being dragged into their berserk circus.

On the other side of the room, Jiraiya straightened at the attention. “Something of value, huh? I can only hope it’s something worth the distraction from our responsibilities.”

His head cocked to the side slowly and confusion tinted his words, seemingly unsure of what his teacher was implying. There was an entirely different conversation going on between them that Sakura seemed to be the only one not understanding it. She glanced between the two men caught up in their own world, their eyes locked together.

They weren’t showing aggression, but the Hokage’s expression held an air of smugness to it that the Sannin, especially Jiraiya, looked to be trying to decode. It didn’t feel like this assignment was a punishment, from what little information she could glean from the Sarutobi’s body language, rather pointing to the Hokage enacting a scheme of some kind on his unsuspecting subordinates.

Whatever that scheme was, no one appeared to know.

“Come along, brat, the old bat won’t get off our backs until we do what he wants.” Tsunade swept from the room with her signature dramatic flair, Sakura felt her eyes roll at the display. She followed after the women with only a small glance backward to the men that remained.

She nearly jerked at the sight of Orochimaru softly chuckling at his disgruntled teammate, Jiraiya playfully threatening to shove him off the chair to their sensei’s obvious amusement.

Her lips tilted slightly at the sight.


	6. The Enigma of Respect

It was funny, how the academy looked identical to how it had when she still took classes there. 

There was a quietness to the building she hadn’t remembered, though. It made her and her companion’s footsteps echo loudly against the hallway’s walls when she was sure that there should be the screaming of children and yelling of teachers to cover the noise. 

In a place so usually filled with life and sound, it was so strange to walk the halls and hear near silence accompanying you as you pass by rooms filled with young children. Obviously, the teachers were aware of their presence and were securing their jobs by keeping the kids on a short leash. 

It almost made her laugh, that these kids would someday be shinobi. Some of them would become high ranking and fearsome, perhaps even one or two would become legends, but the rest would remain as desk ninja or drop out of their chosen profession altogether. She had read the statistics while among the bookshelves in the library, and the spreadsheets that spanned generations, all the way back to the very beginning of the leaf village, reflected just how few of each batch would become anything special. 

She’d resolved long ago that settling for anything less than legendary was unacceptable, and she was quite sure that of the many classes they would see today, there would be at least a few students who shared that same resolve. 

The first two hours were a disappointment. 

The children toddled out of their classrooms single file and gaped at the three legends before them, practically drooling at the chance to speak to famous Shinobi such as the Sannin. Their little eyes widened as questions and praise swam along their irises, curious and naive, they looked at her sensei as if she was a goddess. 

They were nothing special, no matter what the teacher boasted about when it came to agility or speed or heritage. They did not understand what a shinobi was, and therefore they would never become anything but slightly above average.

One of the young girls of the fifth class they observed, had noticed her standing slightly behind her superiors. Her long golden hair bobbed as she tilted her head, a little round face that looked much too soft and smooth for a kunoichi, stared at her. Sakura felt her stance relax the slightest bit watching this little scrap of a girl take notice in her. _ Kanaki _the teacher had called her as he’d walked down the line to introduce them all. 

“Are you a kunoichi too, pink-san?” 

She startled in surprise at the question, nearly dropping the senbon she had been absently twirling between her fingers. Glancing at the others to see if anyone else had seen her embarrassing slip, she was reassured to see the rest of the kids and teacher fawning over the distracted slug princess and toad summoner, while the last of the trio stood sullenly by to observe. 

Jiraiya was telling some outlandish tale to his audience, flashing a large toothy grin and waving his arms in wide sweeping gestures animatedly. Tsunade stood on his left, watching in amusement and fondness despite the dismissive flip of her ponytail behind her shoulder while addressing the children not enthralled with her teammate’s tale, that he hadn’t been the one to save the day but it was her instead while he was stuck under a boulder. 

Turning back to the only student that had shown any interest in her at all, she slowly blinked a few times to gather her bearings. 

“Pink-san…?” When she was a young girl, she’d been bold and blunt as well. It was something Sakura had grown out of quite quickly when she realized it only made the beatings worse. But this little girl just addressed a shinobi as _ pink-san, _being openly disrespectful even if she hadn’t meant to. 

Because she wasn’t conditioned to keep her mouth shut in fear of bruises and ripped clothes and punches. She wasn’t afraid because no one had _ made _ her afraid. 

“‘Cause your pretty hair! Like- like... Sakura blossoms!” Kanaki looked up at her through thick upper lashes and a sun-bleached fringe, her dark eyes holding pride for the comparison and, Sakura realized with a jolt, looking for Sakura’s approval. 

She had been like the girl in that way as well. Starved for attention and approval, hungry for the slightest bit of recognition from a teacher or even a peer. It was that insatiable need that moved her forward through all her years at the academy, it was what continued to push her past average where so many of her previous classmates had happily settled. 

They had been content. But she hadn’t.

And sometimes when Sakura couldn’t sleep and spent the night staring at the moon, she felt fear creeping along her skin. Fear that maybe she wouldn’t _ ever _ be content, no matter how high she climbed or how much she became. That maybe she would _ never _ be happy with what she was. 

That maybe nothing would ever be enough. 

And Kanaki looked at Sakura like Sakura looked at everyone else she just wanted to_ see_ her. 

It _terrified her_. Because if Kanaki became a shinobi, there was a good chance the academy student would end up just like Sakura. 

“Thank you…” She murmured faintly, staring down at this little girl, so utterly unbroken by the world. And suddenly, Sakura wanted Kanaki to quit the academy, she wanted her to fail the exams, she wanted the girl’s parents to force her to be a civilian. Because she looked like a mirror at that moment, and it reflected the price Sakura paid to get where she was. 

The next four classes went by in a blur, just blank faces she had glanced at before being whisked away to the next classroom. There was a slight twinge of guilt in her chest, as she realized she hadn’t even given the kids a chance before forgetting all about them, trapped in her dazed state. 

She was only a couple years older than these students, yet it felt like they were decades younger. They seemed so free, so happy, so filled with the hope she had lost. It made her grieve for her childhood. And it brought back a memory from long ago. 

**“A kunoichi is a perversion!” Long fingers tightly knotted back her long strands into an intricate series of braids and knots. “You are best to remember the disgrace those women are and the shame they bring to their family by pursuing such a path.”**

**Little Sakura nodded along to her mother’s words, not understanding the meaning behind her voice. Her chubby hands clenched at the smooth fabric at her side, as she asked her mother, “Mama, am I gonna go to ‘ta aca’temy?” Her hand were yanked from the sides of the dress as the material was careful smoothed back into place and a hand closed like a vice around her chin. **

**Forcing her daughter’s eyes to meet her own, she spoke in a cold voice brooking no argument, “You will ** ** _never _ ** **step foot in that wretched building. Do you understand?” **

**The little girl frantically bobbed her head in agreement until her mother was satisfied and finally relinquished the tight grip that would leave bruises on the girl’s cheeks. “Now, stop your childish behavior and remember your lessons. Being an ** ** _embarrassment _ ** **will not be tolerated at this important dinner meeting.”**

**And so the little girl, not more than five-years-old powdered and painted her face as young ladies do and fitted elaborate combs into her hair. And so the little girl grew up so fast, she didn’t really ever get a childhood at all. **

The present crashed back into her, as Sakura took a deep steadying breath and pushed away those memories. Those memories that she would never relive and never revisit. It was the past and the past was over and done with. 

“This is the last one.” Her teacher didn’t glance at her as she strode ahead, but her head was still tilted towards her apprentice as if to ask her why she was acting so strangely. Sakura focused her eyes on the wall beside them rather than answer the unspoken question, instead filling the silence that Orochimaru and Jiraiya seemed too busy bickering to end, with a question of her own. “This is class number seven, why is it that Lord Hokage-Sama instructed us to visit them last instead of in the normal order?”

It truth, the question was more than just a way to throw her teacher off the scent, Sakura had been wondering about the oddity of the Hokage’s instructions since they had left his office. The “excitement” of the day had more or less kept it in the back of her mind, but now that there were no more distractions, the question was puzzling her. 

There was something about it that rubbed her the wrong way. At first, she had thought the point of sending the Sannin to the academy was to humble them or remind them of where they came from. Then the idea shifted to something else entirely when she factored herself into the equation. Perhaps the idea was to show them the divide between civilian students and clan kids, something that was still clear and prominent while observing them today. But Sakura had dismissed that after the first class. 

The Sannin didn’t even glance at the civilian kids, didn’t even notice the disconnect that Sakura couldn’t help _ but _see. 

They were too entertained by the children’s enthusiasm and childish glee, to see how civilians stood on one side of the group and the clan borns stood on the other. They didn’t seem to _ care _that, without fail, every single class was separated by this invisible barrier. 

It still made something crack in her chest, still made the fire burn in her stomach to see it, but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t force the Sannin to see what they didn’t care to notice on their own, and she shouldn’t feel the disappointment she did, choking her heart like smoke. 

She knew who the Sannin were before she met them, and no matter how much she thought she’d understood them, no matter how much she _ thought _she knew them, there would always be that barrier between them. And she let her guard down enough to forget that. 

Sakura had actually let herself think that they were cut from the same cloth. But now she was painfully reminded that her cloth had been ripped apart and stitched back together like patchwork, while theirs had been silk woven with gold. They would never be the same, and it was best for her to remember that simple fact because it wouldn’t be changing in her lifetime if it ever did change at all. 

From across the hall, her eyes caught a pair of slitted irises for just a second before she forcefully pulled her gaze away, unable to acknowledge the shade of concern that had darkened the liquid gold to burnt amber. 

Her back straightened with resolve as she steeled herself for the last group, she was hoping the kids would just ignore her and let her be. With so many thoughts crowding her mind, she couldn’t bring herself to revisit the mystery of the class order, not when she was hardly keeping it together under the inquisitive stares of two of the three sannin.

Sakura snapped back into awareness as the wooden door knocked against the opposite wall, Tsunade arching a brow at her in faked impatience, waiting for her to follow the others into the room. She hadn’t even realized she was the only one yet to enter until she quickly glanced around the now-empty hall for the two men she was accompanying and saw nothing but the browned walls of the academy and its hardwood floors. 

“You’ve been quiet since you talked to that girl in class five.”

“You- you noticed me talking to her?” She rolled her shoulders uncomfortably under the woman’s honeyed eyes. 

Something flashed across her face, something Sakura couldn’t place or understand. Tsunade’s face was unreadable as she scrutinized her student. Whatever it was that she saw in her teacher's face wasn’t gone, no it was still there. Hiding. And she realized that maybe whatever it was had always been there. She had just not noticed. 

It was dark. It put her teeth on edge, prickled her skin, and straightened the hair on the back of her neck. But then like a spell coming to an end, the feeling evaporated, leaving behind nothing to show that it ever even happened. 

“You’ll understand someday. On the battlefield, you either notice everything or find yourself six feet under.” 

Sakura slipped past her without a word, confusion curling in stomach. Something she’d said had triggered that reaction, but she couldn’t understand what it was that she said. Was it- Was it the comment about noticing her… But why would that bother her?

Shaking herself from her thoughts, she settled herself next to Jiraiya, slightly behind him as to conceal her presence with his large frame. He curiously glanced at her from the corner of his eye for a moment but didn’t comment on her choice to stand next to him while her mentor stood on Orochimaru’s other side, the farthest spot from Tsunade. 

The teacher stepped forward, smiling widely at his guests as he began to loudly present his students one at a time. The names began to blur together, students of the same basic features stopped being distinguishable from each other, and Sakura was reminded quite fiercely how monotonous this assignment was. 

But then he reached the last student. 

Sakura blinked at the boy, his bright blonde hair and blue eyes catching her attention. 

Blonde hair wasn’t all that uncommon in Konoha, but that shade of sunshine yellow certainly was. It was striking against his eyes which were also an unusual shade. They weren’t clouded or a silvery gray tint, instead they were so bright you were pulled to them from across the room. 

Jiraiya was the one to introduce himself to the boy first, the other two following his example, but Sakura stayed rooted to the spot. There was just something about him… It caught her interest when no other student could, but at the same time, it made her apprehensive about approaching him. 

Obviously to Orochimaru, it didn’t matter. His pointed stare from across the room was a clear message for her to come join them. It was a strange sight when she stopped beside the Sannin to watch as Tsunade entertained the majority of the children. Even Orochimaru seemed to be speaking with a few of the kids who were more quiet and bookish, but Jiraiya, the one who had been the main person entertaining the classes up to this point, was completely engrossed with the boy with the sunshine hair. 

They talked enthusiastically like they had always known each other, whoever the kid was, didn’t seem all that intimidated by the toad summoner. In fact, the personalities of the two seemed to just- click. 

And it hit her like a brick. 

  
  
  


_ I’m sure you all may find something of value through this experience. _

  
  
  


This is why class seven was the last one. Because the Hokage wanted to make sure that Jiraiya realized that this kid was the best he was gonna get, even if he examined every student in the academy. Because this had nothing to do with her or Tsunade or Orochimaru, this had everything to do with Jiraiya and his teacher tricking him into taking on an apprentice. 

Is that all that she was there for? 

Was her entire life uprooted and future upheaved so that the Hokage’s female student could have an apprentice and therefore convince the toad sage to also take on a student?!

Was she just a piece to be played in his _ damn _game of shoji.

She didn’t care that Orochimaru stiffened behind her from the feel of killing intent she had accidentally let slip before smothering. She was _ furious. _ She was _ pissed. _

And when Jiraiya glanced behind him to his teammate’s apprentice and told her to introduce herself to his new student, the pounding in her ears stopped Sakura from hearing the boy's name. 

Her blood felt like molten rock, flowing through her veins and setting every inch a flame in burning hot rage. But just like she’d been taught since her childhood, she wiped the emotions from her face and straightened her back, hooded her eyes, and coated her words with pleasantries. 

“Sakura Haruno.” She curtly stated to the younger boy, her arms clasped behind her back in what looked like practiced etiquette, but was instead self-restraint. He took her in for a moment, eyes lingering on her hair, something she herself had done for him. He was shorter than her, by about half a head and she took satisfaction in the fact she could loom over him. 

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you Haruno-san. I’m going to become Jiraiya-sensei’s apprentice.” He smiled at her brightly, his relaxed stance showing nothing but friendliness. 

And it just made everything worse. 

Gods, he was _ perfect. _ He was everything you’d want in an apprentice. He was kind and happy and got along well with others, he was a good student, a quick learner, a fucking _ prodigy _he was-

Better than you, a voice hissed to her from the recesses of her mind. 

She hated the way he smiled like there was nothing wrong in the world, she _ hated it. _

“Only shinobi can be apprentices.” Her words’ saccharine sweetness felt sickening on her tongue, just as the fake curl of her lips felt so utterly wrong. It was a cruel thing to say, a cruel thing to crush the hopes of a child for her own vengeful feelings, but Sakura didn’t care. 

She didn’t regret saying it, even after she saw the kindness wiped from Jiraiya’s face. 

The Sannin looked close to intervening when his _ new apprentice _stopped him. 

His eyes hardened from the pools of blue they’d been, to azurite stones, but he didn’t retaliate with insults or accusations, nor did he cry or protest. 

He grinned, a sharp, determined smile full of defiance. 

“I suppose I’ll just have to graduate this year then.” Caught off guard, Sakura paused. 

An older shinobi that was an acquaintance of the man he wanted to be the apprentice of and looked up to, had just told him that he was not a shinobi and implied he wasn’t good enough to be an apprentice. 

And he stared her in the eyes and challenged her. 

This kid… 

“A shinobi is more than just a graduation certificate.” She stated dismissively turning away from them to rejoin Tsunade towards the front of the classroom. She didn’t get far before a voice made her steps stall. 

“Then how would I prove that I’m a shinobi?” 

Glancing back over her shoulder, Sakura replied the first thing she could think of. 

“You’ll prove it when you’re faster than me.”

When she left the academy that day, she could hardly remember the promise she made to the little boy with sunshine hair. That she would acknowledge he was a true shinobi once his speed outmatched her’s. It was a stupid, off-hand statement that she’d made, after all, who would ever remember something as trivial as that? Besides, her speed was something she prided herself on, and among shinobi, it was hardly prioritized over strength or jutsus. The chances of him ever matching her speed were incredibly low. 

It wasn’t until they had returned to the Hokage’s office and finished giving their report, that Sakura remembered she hadn’t caught the name of Jiraiya’s new apprentice. 

As she left with her teacher, eager to continue her training and hopefully carve out some time in the night to meet up with Orochimaru, she nonchalantly asked for the boy’s name, careful to avoid the woman’s shrewd gaze. 

“You really must have been out of it. Jiraiya, the big oaf, was practically singing to the rooftops about his new student.” She glanced at Sakura with an amused look, scrutinizing her apprentice’s interest in the other boy. 

“ His name’s Minato Namikaze, and he’s not from a clan so his name won’t sound familiar.” She lightly replied. 

And Sakura nodded, thinking nothing more of it because, to her, it was just some random name without meaning. 

And she mistakenly believed it would be the last time she’d hear it. 


	7. Sometimes Good Intentions Aren't Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry everyone for the like 4 month hiatus I took out of literally no where... shits been crazy my dudes. Barely had time to anything these past few months with all the family drama and school loading on the work, quarantine's been nice though. Sadly that's brought it's own wagon full of family crap soooooooo my free time is STILL limited. This is why I'm never marrying, or having children. Anyway, please enjoy this chapter, I kinda messed up the plot last chapter cause I got ahead of myself and had to rework it, so this is mostly all new stuff. This chapter is basically a whole plot I just started so if things seem to come out of nowhere this chapter, that's why. (It wasn't planned from the beginning, so I haven't been able to set it up in the chapters coming before this one). So, enjoy the chapter, leave comments about your favorite thing about quarantine (or don't), and lets all try not to go stir crazy ;)

The snake's tail twitched. 

Sakura watched, transfixed as it eyed her. Warm gold like liquid honey, full of distrust and suspicion. (They were incredibly familiar.) It was almost as if the creature was wondering what she'd done to it, to be able to command a limb that didn't belong to her. 

A limb that she had no right over, and no right to control. She felt a brief twinge of something at the thought, a memory surfacing of a girl whose hair was yanked and body was shoved to the dirt. A little girl who was completely helpless while others pulled her strings. It dampened her smile for a moment before she smothered it in the pleasurable haze of success, determined to never let such thoughts hold her back. 

Her hands held a slight tremor as they moved back into the familiar formations, weariness nearly causing the joints to lock in place from the repetitive motion. 

Her fingers formed the tiger seal. 

The animal perched on the (her) lab table, hissed in agitation as it's tail was once again jerked to the side by an unseen force. 

It worked. 

Kami, it _worked. _

Her vision swam with relief, and in her exhausted state, she allowed herself to sink into the empty plastic chair waiting for her. 

A warmth was spreading beneath her breast, something soft and light. 

(It almost felt like hope.)

Her laugh lit up the room in a way it never could before. She didn't hold it back, didn't muffle it while she was hidden away in a place no one could hear it. 

Orochimaru wasn't there to judge her or laugh at her, he was off on a mission with the senju boy, Nawaki if she remembered correctly. (Mentor and apprentice, off on a mission full of danger and excitement.) 

Not that he was around all that often to begin with, he gave her the tools to do something amazing and left her alone to do. In a way it was faith. In a way, it was just not caring enough to stay. 

The rest of the day, and then week flew by like it never had before. There was no longer the dreadful reminder of a long night researching and working her hands until the bones ground together and the skin burned, but instead she felt... Well awake for the first time in months. 

Like she had been sleepwalking up until then. No doubt it had impacted her performance, it must have. Before she could only heal one, maybe two fishes, but now she could do five and still have chakra to spare. It was incredible to see the look on her supervising nurse's face as she moved onto her third patient in a row without an ounce of weariness. 

The other medic nin were finally starting to see her as more than just an upstart who'd gained the hospital head's pity, but a real member of their staff. There were no more snide comments behind closed doors or whispering behind their hands in the halls when she passed by, she had even been given a gruff compliment by one of the senior medics. 

(Not that her "teacher" would know that. Neither Sakura, nor the hospital had seen much of her lately. The younger nurses who gossiped in the lounge during breaks had mentioned a man being a part of it. Sakura barely managed to retrain herself from breaking the table they were sitting at.)

She finally returned to the schedule of work, then home, then sleep that had been neglected for- 

Kami, it had already been almost a year since her apprenticeship began, and only a few months less than that since she had begun working on her jutsu. Her thirteenth birthday would be coming up in a few months (Not that she would be celebrating it.) 

Orochimaru was an interesting partner to have, but sadly didn't help her to keep a healthy sleeping schedule. If anything, his disregard for human necessities like food and water, only worsened her own tendencies to go without such things. 

She'd warned him, if he passed out from malnutrition, she wouldn't be able to help him. She would mostly likely have already passed out from dehydration at that point. 

They were mutually bad influences on each other. 

But at least he was present. He didn't respond to her when she spoke aloud about ways to refine her jutsu, but when she mentioned certain seals she wished to try, they would mysteriously appear at the (her) lab table. He watched in amusement when a cobra broke free and chased after her around the lab, but after she contained it, he had taken her arm with gentleness she had never seen him use before, and bandaged her bites with care. 

(She remembered a time only weeks ago, when another person would bandage her swollen knuckles and correct her stance. When another person would make her think that- that maybe that's what it felt to have a- )

Some days it felt like she was running backwards, and no matter how fast she moved, nothing brought her closer to her goals. Those days were the hardest by far, especially when all there was to return home to was an empty apartment with no lights on. 

There was no one she could confide in, either. Orochimaru technically listened, but he didn't hear. He sat, dissecting a cow heart for some experiment or other, and gave her a soft humm every now and then, to let her know he wasn't oblivious to her one sided conversation. 

Even if she did, even if she spilled everything out to him, he would never understand. Not the way she felt in that moment. They were just too different, he pushed away affection and friendship but somehow still attracted it. Yet she- she somehow managed to successfully repel everyone who would ever care. 

It was a talent, and she wasn't sure she wanted it anymore. 

(She knew he wouldn't take her side anyway. He would still find a way to defend her, to say she wasn't at fault, and maybe she wasn't, maybe Sakura was just losing it, maybe she was breaking down and just wanted SOMEONE TO NOTICE-)

There were also other days, where she lingered outside Tsunade's office. She would hesitate there by the door. Stalled and considering knocking, yet she turned on her heel and headed home every time. But if the woman inside ever noticed, she didn't seem to care. (She never seemed to anymore.)

Being an apprentice was starting to gain a monotonous feel to it. Sakura watched time and time again as other genin left the village on escort missions or with a scroll to be delivered to some daimyo of a distant land. They left with teachers who ruffled their hair and teammates who raced them to the gates and called them stupid names. 

In a different lifetime, that would have been her. Between two other genin as they followed their jonin teacher through the trees, on their way to a new adventure, to a new world full of vibrance, and jutsu, and adventure. Sure, death would be just a step behind, but after being trapped in the village for so long, it would be worth it. 

It would be worth it to actually be living. 

It was a week after her breakthrough, the week after her work finally seemed to amount to something, when she finally seemed to be moving forward- that Tsunade called Sakura to her office. 

After weeks of second hand orders and messengers coming to lead her to her next task, the Great and Powerful Sannin herself finally decided to grace the lowly mortal with her presence. 

Sakura snorted at the scroll that she'd found on her couch. 

It had been almost a year. A year of scrubbing bedpans, and watching her "teacher" get drunk on booze, and doing nothing but falling behind everyone else. And for a time, yes, it had felt nice. 

It had felt like having a friend for the very first time, and drinking liquor had been fun, and the physical training had meant that she really was going to be doing something with her life. 

And then it all went down hill. 

Suddenly the slug princess didn't have time for her apprentice. Suddenly the training came to halt, and it was like Tsunade didn't even remember she existed! And everything that made the academy so awful, reared its ugly head. And it killed whatever happiness she had been nurturing. It killed whatever trust, had been building. 

Because Tsunade was leaving her. 

Just like her parents and the friends she had only known for a few days, and every teacher who had never cared whether or not she succeeded. She was being abandoned all over again, because no matter how many times she screamed at her damn heart to stop **caring**, It **never** listened and this is what always happens. 

The thoughts pounded against her skull, vicious and unforgiving, and she let them drown her. 

She always let people steal whatever part of her, she was stupid enough to let be vulnerable to them. 

Dumb, dumb little girl. 

Sakura breathed in deep before letting it out. She needed to remember how to breathe. 

It only ever took her a moment to shushin to her teacher's office. She took the stairs instead. 

Something was shaking beneath her skin, rattling against the walls of her chest cavity. Something was banging against her ribcage like a siren's wailing, struggling to get free of the tangled organs and bone. 

The door cracked against the wall, shattering the quiet of the room. 

Amber eyes met hers over the mound of paperwork on her desk, she seemed to be neglecting. 

"You wanted to see me?" She pointedly stared at the crack on the windowsill across from her. 

"Yes, I did." The Sannin steepled her fingers before her mouth, considering her apprentice. Sakura could feel the narrowing of her teacher's eyes as they studied her, no doubt realizing that Sakura was very pointedly avoiding her gaze. 

"And what is this regarding?" She questioned smoothly, her eyes remaining fixed over Tsunade's shoulder. Her voice was clipped, and forcibly kept as formal as possible, lest the anger she was hiding rear its ugly head. 

"The medics supervising your training have informed me about a sudden... increase in your endurance and concentration over the last week." The woman drawled. 

Her tone was low, dripping with something... 

Disapproval. 

It was disapproval. 

Her shoulders went rigid, sharp like the rest of her. 

"I'm touched they noticed such subtle changes in my behavior." Her smile was dripping with something similar, something just as seeking to hurt and tear and rip. Her voice was smooth, but it held a growl simmering just below each vowel. 

"Sakura. I'm not Sarutobi, or Jiraiya, or Orochimaru, I won't spend a month delicately pussy footing around the issue, trying to gauge what's wrong. I'll ask you blunty, and I'll expect the truth. Are you using?" 

_"What?!"_ Her head snapped to the side, eyes fixing onto her teacher's as her mind went blank for a moment. Everything that this could have been about, of everything she could have asked, could have insinuated! How dare she. How fucking _dare_ she chalk up any improvement, any actual development on Sakura's part to _that?!_

"A suddenly larger capacity of chakra, more focused demeanor, they're all side effects reminiscent of soldier pills..." 

She was saying something else, probably rattling off more symptoms, but the rushing in Sakura's ears was drowning out the entire world. And the woman before her had gone mute, lips moving but no sound coming of it. 

"I've been improving in leaps and bounds in my technique since I learned the mystical palm!" She spat back, interrupting whatever the woman had been saying, a sharp pain spiking through her fingertips to the joints. It wasn't until she tried to step forward that Sakura realized a chair laid before her, and she'd sunk her fingers into the wood of it's back rest. 

"Improving is one thing, but so quickly? Out of _nowhere?"_ She retorted, calm as ever. Nothing was behind those amber eyes, just swirls of earthen brown mixing with the gold liquor surrounding her pupils. It would have almost been pretty, if they hadn't been so empty of emotion, something a person couldn't do without trying. 

It only pissed her off more. 

"Out of nowhere?! I've been training myself to exhaustion night after night for weeks, because apparently my "_teacher"_ doesn't have time to waste on her apprentice!" Her voice was steadily rising, and the rafters rustled in the way a breeze could have moved them, but no windows were open. 

"I'm the head of a Hidden Village's hospital, during **wartime**-" Calm her eyes may have been, but Tsunade's own tone was rising to match hers, swelling as something sparked behind her eyes. 

And Sakura kept pushing. 

She kept going, she refused to just let this go, because there, right there, a glint, a flare of something, because she was being seen, because Tsunade was finally seeing her-

"That isn't the fucking reason, don't you dare lie."

"Don't _you_ dare use that language with me!"

"It's because I'm a civilian nobody isn't it?! Because why should you _care_ unless I'm some kind of **clanborn prodigy**!" Her voice cracked but it stayed strong, uncontrolled like a whirlwind, ripping up the trees and scattering the soil.

A hurricane was engulfing the room, their voices the wind, and every accusation another lightning bolt setting the bushes on fire. 

Sakura wondered viciously how bad it had to get before the Anbu finally showed their faces. 

"That is **not** the reason!" Large, calloused hands slammed onto the desk, cracks racing along the surface. Splinters were raising out of the wood, red slowly seeping into them as skin broke over the jagged edges. 

"Oh really?! You don't seem to give a shit how people like me are treated in this village! **No one** does! And what would even know about it anyway! You're a medic nin prodigy, the last lady Senju, the descendent of the first two hokages-"

"Why the fuck do you _think_ I chose you to be my apprentice!"

"You_ didn't_, the hokage did-" Her voice was going hoarse, like each word was sharp and barbed with hooked points, dragging along her throat and ripping the skin to shreds. 

She was no longer the only one raising her voice. 

"No, he suggested you, and I agreed because you're a civilian and maybe if the last lady senju, the "great and all powerful prodigy," could see the potential in a non clanborn kid, then others would follow."

"Is this what you do? Use people for your own personal goals? Is that all I ever was to you? Some tool!" She laughed, humorlessly in disbelief. 

She may have expected it, known it even, but to hear her admit it... To know, really know, it still broke her heart.

"I-"

"_No wonder your brother didn't want you as his sensei, no wonder he chose Orochimaru instead!"_ She was hurt, she was digging for the worst thing she could think to say, to hit her opponent where it hurt just like she'd always been taught. 

The words had left her mouth before her mind caught up with her, before she realized what she'd done. 

**"At least I have a family!"**

Sakura breath was sucked in to the back of her throat, staying there as if waiting for the moment to break and for her to realize this was all just another night terror. Another bad dream. 

Silence hung in the air, the words were smothering and heavy and crackling, where they clung to the space around them. Neither moved for a moment, as if sure this was somehow not real. 

Tsunade-san's eyes were widened, as if she hadn't been the one to voice that last sentence, like it had been someone else and she was just as hurt as Sakura. The bright red lines that had hovered just before their feet since before they met, blazed vividly as if to remind them they were still there. 

Except, they no longer illuminated their faces, instead shining along their back and heels, a step behind them. 

Eyes that Sakura swore had been golden once, were a muddy brown, flat and filled with- 

It didn't matter, because she stood there for a minute longer, lingering inside the room and waiting. Waiting for the woman across from her to say something, to do something. 

But her lips sealed closed, eyes unyielding. Sakura's own mouth stayed still, as well. 

Without another word, she turned and left the room for the last time. 

Sakura allowed herself to be consumed by her work. The rhythmic pattern of awakening at the same time each morning, going to the same place for the same amount of time, and returning home to the same dinner. 

It was almost a numb feeling that followed her, dampening the colors that were once vivid.

Her feet were cold against the tiled floor, when she slipped in through her door that evening. The last month had been uneventful, but not relaxing. Her toes clenched tighter at the thought. 

No, not relaxing at all. Her muscles had been strung tight with stress every moment nothing suddenly went wrong. A year of training and learning, hecticly packing every bit of her time with activities, working endlessly until she had no free time whatsoever. 

It made her feel like for the first time she was actually working towards her future. Like for once, she was becoming the woman she had always wished to be. There were setbacks, being a medic-nin, and there were dark moments, her parents, but there was also the addictive feeling of accomplishment she had very briefly known. 

The ecstacy of a forming jutsu, the satisfaction of moving on to actual healing vs changing bedpans and other rather embarrassing tasks. There were highlights, however fleeting, but they were there, just like the low points. 

But this? This _normalcy?! _ It was maddening. 

Every time she heard the hospital doors slam open, her hands would flicker with chakra , ready to begin healing whatever seriously injured individual required it, only to be left staring at the receptionist thanking their husband for bringing them the lunch bento they forgot. 

The worst part was her supervising doctor's expression every time they caught her like that, chakra flickering around her fingertips, limbs tensed and ready to jump into action any moment.

There was no deciphering the emotions lurking behind his eyes, but they reminded her of another set of eyes. These ones were a brown so light they were almost yellow, but not quite, very different from his mundane black pupils, but somehow they held the same feeling. 

It made her teeth clench until her jaw sputtered, and she quickly broke eye contact as if his stare had burned her. Sakura knew it was mocking, the look he gave her. "Oh look at this stupid little girl, acting like she's a real shinobi." 

His lilting tone, almost as if he was softly singing, always so careful around her, as if teasing her cruelly with her weaknesses brought on by her youth. His constant inquiries about whether or not she had friends, when she'd graduated, if she even believed that she was ready to be a medic- 

He was like every other adult that questioned how strong she was, how ready to be a kunoichi. Sneering at her as being "too young" for war, as if she hadn't proved herself time and time again. 

She would force them to acknowledge her, to see her. 

She set her mug of tea back on the counter, still almost completely full and growing cold. It was bland and watery, nothing but leaf juice in her eyes, but there was nothing else to drink (hot chocolate being the only other hot drink still available during wartime, not that she'd even consider it as an option. She was the equivalent of an adult, and adults don't partake in such childish things). 

Speaking of the war, it was revving back up again. There had been a bit of a lull as spring began, the various villages seeming to pull back as festivities for the spring solstice commenced, before beginning again with a vengeance. 

Sakura's thoughts continued buzzing as if demanding attention, replaying gossip she'd heard around the hospital and in the Hokage's tower. She set down the ceramic mug in the sink before running some cool water over her hands. She stood there for a minute, icy liquid running over her calluses and scars. 

Cupping her hands, she splashed it over her face, before gripping the basin with whitened knuckles. Even with her eyes squeezed shut, the images her mind created refused to stop. 

Anxiety was normal. It was normal for someone's first mission. If anything, she should have expected this reaction, the last few weeks had been tense to say the least. To be told she was embarking on her first mission, and it was the first time she'd be leaving Konoha, AND she had no idea what the mission entailed or who she'd be working with-

It was a lot. It was amazing and incredible and invigorating... but it was a lot. 

Sakura was a planner. Unpredictability and surprises were not her forte in any way, shape, or form. Now, her departure growing near, it really hit her just how much that would need to change in the coming weeks, months, or years. 

All those things were going to become common occurrences during her career, and a surefire way to be barred from advancing past genin or getting yourself killed in combat, is not being capable of thinking on your feet. 

The mission scroll had been seated innocently on her bedside table when Sakura had arrived home earlier that evening. There was fear of the unknown - of course - but the moment she'd recognized what the scroll actually was, her heart had thumped. 

It had pounded in her chest like a firecracker, and she'd felt something. It was real excitement skittering between her nerves, true giddiness coating her smile. The next morning would be the start of an adventure, despite how dangerous, it was an adventure... and she'd never been part of one of those before. 

(A childhood full of "You can't play with us," and "Freak," made certain that even imaginary journeys never included her. Made sure that Sakura had never partaken in a quest to save a damsel in distress, or slay a dragon, or become a knight in shining armor. People like her didn't get to fight monsters. It's why so many like her become one.)

That night, Sakura went to bed with electricity fizzling along her skin, and gold dust in her veins. 

* * *

The battlefield isn't soaked in blood.

No one's screaming. No one's crying dramatically over the dead corpse of their true love.

The loudest sound Sakura's ears could pick up was the wind rustling in the tree branches. There were dead bodies, stacked up in piles where they were being carted off for mass burials. Maggots and fleas buzzed among the mounds of flesh and viscera, eating away at faces that were already decayed beyond recognition. 

Blood vessels in the eyes had popped and leaked ocular fluid in dark treks along swollen cheeks and settling by the crest of bloated, crimson lips still stained from the last bits of blood they'd choked to death on. 

The medics were huddled in tents, far from the carnage. But she couldn't be. 

She had to be there, in the middle of all this death. She needed to know it was real, and it was there, and she was staring at it. 

Sakura looked at the people who'd died without as much as a scream, who'd had their lives ripped away as they hid silently in bushes and trees and underbrush, not daring to make a sound and actually believing that could save them. 

It was sombering. 

Kami, it was _fucking horrifying_. 

And she didn't cry, or puke, or yell, there was no shouting at the shinobi who were dealing with the corpses or medics who couldn't save them, begging them to explain how they could be so heartless, so cruel, so uncaring. She just- stood there. And watched enemies and comrades being loaded into wagons and taken away to a place their families and names and faces could not follow. 

Unmarked graves for daughters and sons and lovers who no longer mattered, like a kunai sharpened one too many times. 

But she wasn't a weapon, the speck of blood tainting the grass by her foot trembled, unnoticed by everyone - even her - as her fists unconsciously clenched, she was a wielder of one. 

Sakura turned and headed for the nearest tent, ready for her assignment. The piles of casualties were too high, much too high, and if... If maybe she could do something...

If she could more than just try to defend her comrades on the field with her knives and jutsu and killing intent... Then didn't those people at least deserve her making the effort to try? 

A man wailed, shattering the silence from where a nurse pressed bandages to his inflamed knee. It looked nearly charred black, shivering with the tremors of pain wracking the man's body as medics and nurses held him down. 

And something clicked.

If she could do something so there was one less young man or woman or child being uncaringly thrown in stacks like trash- while their family had only the crisp, white scrolls of condolences to blunt their grief- 

There were probably people in those tents right then with wounds that could put them in the ground forever. 

With that thought and the swallowing of a lump in her throat, Sakura straightened her back and steeled her eyes, whipping open the tent flaps. 

"Sakura Haruno, Tsunade Senju's apprentice, reporting for duty." She called to what looked to be the nurse in charge, bustling along the line of brownish, stained cots set up and filled with far too many patients with far too dire wounds. 

"Ah... Yes, Lord Hokage mentioned you were being stationed in our sect." Her gray eyes were old, much too old for the barely white streaked hair she sported in a crown braid. 

"Nayoko will start you on the bedpans done by the left side, the less serious patients, and he'll have you work your way up to the feverish ones who need their temperatures monitored, clothes' changed, sponge bathes, etc. etc." 

The woman snapped her fingers sharply at a man to the right of her, who jumped and nearly dropped the scalpel he seemed to have been wiping down. "H- ha- hai, Oyabun!" Sakura blinked at the man who couldn't be much older than his mid twenties, bowing in quick succession to their supervisor. "Ah yes- we should- th- the patients down there-" 

His voice was stuttery and nervous, and he continued to wring his hands as he talked, obviously inexperienced at having responsibility. "Hurry up, Nyoko! There are patients down there who need fresh bedpans!" The nurse barked at them once more before turning back to the other staff. 

The man- Nyoko- gave nothing more than a surprised squeak in response before hurrying down the aisle to where they were designated to be. With a sigh, Sakura followed, knowing full well she'd need Kami's blessing to make it through this menial work all over again, WITH a stuttering mess of a adult who seemed too timid to even ask the patients to move so he could retrieve the bedpan. 

In fact, the first patient in the line was an older man who seemed to be asleep, and after poking him in an attempt to wake him up, Nyoko resorted to hiding behind his clipboard as the man snored loudly. 

Sakura gently nudged Nyoko aside and prepared to flip the man on his side. 

The war was nothing like she'd expected it to be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was gonna be longer but I felt like I needed to take a bit longer to flesh this out and establish meaning in the argument Sakura and Tsunade had, so this is shorter than I intended. I was probably going to make a 7000 word chapter or something but I thought you guys would appreciate me trying to be quicker with uploads rather than wait another month or two for only like 2000 more words. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading! Don't lick tables!


	8. Update about things (not a story update)

Hey guys so what’s up? I know it’s probably weird how I’ve not updated this fic or any of my fics despite quarantine and I just wanted to explain a few things if anybody’s interested about them.

So first things first, I’m in high school so I’ve got like AP exams and stuff to deal with as well as a TON of work because my teachers are giving us more work than usual to make up for not being in school. Basically, i don’t have unlimited time, is all I’m saying. I’ve pretty much been driving myself crazy with doing so many Naruto’s fanfics and all of them about one character (no matter how much I love said character and the stories themselves).

I’ve pretty much burnt myself out to the point that I was forcing myself to write more for this story because I wanted you guys to have updates rather than because I genuinely wanted to write. Because of this, I’ve decided to start a new (never done this before) project that none of you guys will see until it’s done (if it works out). This is in a different fandom with a wildly different tone (I have to write a sex scene like what??? Wish me luck...) and an original character which is new territory for me, so I’m actually really excited about writing something so new and different.

This means I’ll be writing for this new project for an undecided amount of time but it will probably end up being a long af story so think around 40,000 words which is a lot for me (someone who’s never wrote that much EVER) so I can’t tell how long that could take.

If I get sick of the project and need to update for this to get back my mojo, I might, so heads up about a possible long wait. The last update was already written in advance so I just finished it up and uploaded it before I really started in on my project. So, stay healthy everybody and don’t lick tables! ;)

Peace our quarantine buds! 

Update 1: I have 15,000 words written for this story and it’s literally JUST the epilogue and the first chapter like what?! This new method of just writing is actually working surprisingly well and the freedom is definitely boosting my dedication/inspiration!

update 2: I’m already at 30,000 words and I’m so excited because I might actually finish this (most likely going off my current pace) 100,000 word BEAST!!!! Sooooo YA! 

Update 3: I can’t even with myself right now. So I hit the 40,000 word mark with was supposed to be the maximum, and guys. The main plot hasn’t even fcking started yet. Like, i don’t know what to tell you right now, but. This is gonna be probably a good 100,000 - 150,000 and the longest I’ve ever written for one story is like 20,000. 😐😑😐


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